A reader once wrote to me to ask:

"I have a quick question, and I apologize if it’s awfully trite, but I haven’t been able to find a satisfactory answer after (admittedly,
not-so-exhaustive) searching.  Here it is:
 
From the standpoint of the Catholic Church: does everything happen for a reason?
 
If it does, it smacks a bit of predestination; if it doesn’t, does that mean that God is out of control or doesn’t care? Say a flower grows on a mountaintop and it dies, and no human ever saw a trace of it or knew it existed; how much of that is an effect of an ecosystem going through its natural cycles, and how much is God putting a flower on a mountaintop?"

St. Thomas Aquinas answers the claim that God does not govern all things this way:

"On the contrary, Augustine says (De Civ. Dei v, 11): 'Not only heaven and earth, not only man and angel, even the bowels of the lowest animal, even the wing of the bird, the flower of the plant, the leaf of the tree, hath God endowed with every fitting detail of their nature.' Therefore all things are subject to His government.
 
I answer that, For the same reason is God the ruler of things as He is their cause, because the same gives existence as gives perfection; and this belongs to government. Now God is the cause not indeed only of some particular kind of being, but of the whole universal being, as proved above (44, 1,2). Wherefore, as there can be nothing which is not created by God, so there can be nothing which is not subject to His government. This can also be proved from the nature of the end of government. For a man’s government extends over all those things which come under the end of his government. Now the end of the Divine government is the Divine goodness; as we have shown (2). Wherefore, as there can be nothing that is not ordered to the Divine goodness as its end, as is clear from what we have said above (44, 4; 65, 2), so it is impossible for anything to escape from the Divine government.
 
Foolish therefore was the opinion of those who said that the corruptible lower world, or individual things, or that even human affairs, were not subject to the Divine government. These are represented as saying, 'God hath abandoned the earth' (Ezekiel 9:9)."

However, I’m not really sure that my reader is asking the question that St. Thomas is answering. I suppose part of my hesitancy depends on what my reader means by “for a reason”.  If he means, “Does everything that happens occur because God permits it and incorporates it into his ongoing act of creation and redemption?” then yes: everything happens for a reason.  God is not surprised by events as though he is not omniscient.  Nor is God at a loss at what to do about a created order that got away from his control when he was distracted.  The created order has never gotten away from God’s governance and he has always been in control.

At the same time, however, God has always allowed a certain sort of autonomy to his creatures (and not merely creatures with free will).  Critters do what they were created to do by God, but they do it in a way that is proper to their nature.  Moreover, Creation is not a one-off event that happened with the Big Bang and then was left to bounce around like billiard balls ever since.  God is the very present author of Creation right here and now.  If God wanted to get rid of Creation he would not have to do anything: he would have to stop doing something.  Indeed, even what we call “chance” is something which falls within God’s governance that leaves room for the freedom of his creatures.  So, for instance, a prophet speaking under inspiration tells Ahab that if he goes into battle, he is going to die—and the prophecy is fulfilled by an archer who draws his bow and fires “at random”, killing Ahab as prophesied (1 Kings 22:34).

This has big implications for things like the tussle between creationists and materialists who both imagine the evolution somehow disproves that God could be behind the creation of various species.  Similarly, it impinges on Einstein’s old discomfort with ideas like quantum indeterminacy and his famous remark that “God does not play dice.”  It would appear that, given the biblical data, what we call “chance” (which is a word for what we, not God, are unsure about) is one of the tools God uses in the unfolding drama of Creation and Redemption.

However, if my reader is asking “Does God positively will sin and evil and make people damn themselves so that some larger purpose of His can be accomplished?", then the answer is no.  God does not will sin—ever, though he permits it and turns it to our good (if we let Him.) When we sin we truly do something nonsensical and without reason.  We assert our nothingness and push ourselves away from God who is the Logos who holds all things in being and in good order.  Sin is the attempt to act without reason (though, to be sure, we always provide ourselves with excuses that appear reasonable).  If God the Logos did not incorporate our nonsensical acts into His creative and redemptive plan, they would spin out of control and carry us into nothingness.  But, thanks be to God, he is Lord of all and nothing escapes his Providence, so even our unreasoning acts of sin are turned by Him to the glory of His Name (though, if we remain impenitent, it will do us no good and we could send ourselves to Hell thereby).
 
 
Originally posted at National Catholic Register. Used with permission.
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Dr. Peter Kreeft once noted that, “When Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote his great Summa Theologica, he could find only two objections to the existence of God, even though he tried to list at least three objections to every one of the thousands of theses he tried to prove in that great work” (Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 54). The two objections that Aquinas had in mind were the problem of evil and the apparent ability of science to explain everything without God. During my doctoral studies, however, I came across a series of articles devoted to disproving the existence of God by showing that the very attributes of divinity are incoherent and thus impossible to actualize in reality. These are known as “ontological disproofs.”

Ontological disproofs are logical arguments against of the existence of a thing based on what it would be if it existed. These arguments are very important because they do not simply purport to prove that God does not exist (like, say, the Easter Bunny or martians), but that God cannot exist (like a square circle or a married bachelor). This fairly recent form of argumentation has gained quite a bit of popularity among philosophical atheists (for example, Michael Martin devoted 23 out of 33 articles in his book The Impossibility of God to ontological disproofs).

The basic form of these arguments is something like this:

1. If God exists, he must be like ‘X’.  [Here ‘X’ = some attribute(s) of God, e.g.,  he must be good, loving, omnipotent, etc.].
2. ‘X’ is actually impossible.
3. Therefore, God cannot exist.

Unlike the simplistic rants of some atheists online, these are sophisticated arguments that demand equally sophisticated responses. The argument forms are valid, so to prove them unsound, some premises must be shown to be false.

Another reason for my interest is that I found myself unhappy with the responses I saw from some Christian apologists. It seemed like they were allowing the atheists to set up the rules in such a way that they could not lose, and the apologists were playing into their hands. Further, it seemed that some of the solutions proposed by these apologists would lead to theological heresy.

I saw the overall problem as one of how God can be spoken of correctly without creating these dilemmas that atheists use to argue against his existence. I believe the answer can be found in the classical "doctrine of analogy" – a way of understanding God-talk that does not open itself up (as easily, at least) to ontological disproofs, and also safeguards orthodox theology.

That pretty much summarizes my dissertation. For those interested in the topic, a more robust discussion follows.

Constructing Ontological Disproofs

Constructing a basic ontological disproof is fairly straightforward:

1. Assert that God must have some attribute (‘X’).
2. Define ‘X’.
3. Offer counterexample(s) to the possible actualization of ‘X’.
4. Redefine ‘X’ to avoid counterexample(s) problem.
5. Repeat 3 and 4 until procedure shows that ‘X’ cannot be actualized,.
6. Conclude that because ‘X’ cannot be actualized, God cannot exist.

Examples:

• Omnipotence: The ability to do all things must include the ability to not do certain things, for some abilities preclude others by definition.
• Omniscience: No other being can know propositions with certain indexicals (time, location, subject-object, etc).
• Supernaturality: There must be at least one fundamental law of creation which is not a result of God’s will – that of God’s will being effective. Therefore God’s ability to will is also natural.

A variant of this kind of argument is to pit two attributes against one another. If it can be demonstrated that God must have two attributes that cannot actually coexist, then God cannot exist:

1. Assert that God has attribute ‘X’.
2. Assert that God has attribute ‘Y’.
3. Show that A follows from ‘X’.
4. Show that ~A follows from ‘Y’.
5. Conclude that because “‘A’ and ‘~A'” cannot be true, God cannot exist.

Examples:

• Perfection vs. Creator: A perfect being needs nothing, but without a need God would not create.
• Creator vs. Immutability: An unchanging being cannot intend to create at one time and not at another.
• Immutability vs. Omniscience: An unchanging being cannot know changing truths (which differ from one time to another).
• Transcendence vs. Omnipresence: A transcendent being cannot be present as well.
• Justice vs. Mercy: No being can both give what one deserves and not give what one deserves.

Answering Ontological Disproofs

Modern Philosophy

Although many responses to these kinds of arguments have been offered, most follow the same basic method. Namely, they accept that the only way out of these logical conundrums is to change the definition of God’s attributes until they no longer suffer from the atheist’s attack, and proceed to do so until they have reached that goal. A good example of the procedure is found in two chapters of William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland’s Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (reproduced online here). In his response to ontological disproofs, Craig makes two interesting remarks:

1. Scripture gives philosophers a wide latitude with regard to doctrinal formulations.
2. Anti-theistic critiques can be helpful in forming more adequate conceptions of doctrine.

He goes on to say that “two controls have tended to guide this inquiry into the divine nature: Scripture and Perfect Being theology.” He goes so far as to conclude that “Theists thus found that antitheistic critiques of certain conceptions of God could actually be quite helpful in framing a more adequate conception.” An example of this procedure is found in his response to problems of God’s immutability (changelessness):

"Rejection of radical immutability leaves it open for us to affirm nonetheless that God is immutable in the biblical sense of being constant and unchangeable in His character. Moreover, He is immutable in His existence (necessity, aseity, eternity) and His being omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. These essential attributes are enough to safeguard God’s perfection without having Him frozen into immobility."

While “framing a more adequate conception” in this way might get around some skeptical arguments, this kind of thinking also leads Craig to deny that God is eternal (atemporal):

"A second powerful argument for divine temporality is based on God’s being all-knowing. In order to know the truth of propositions expressed by tensed sentences like “Christ is risen from the dead” God must exist temporally. For such knowledge locates the knower relative to the present."

Similar thinking has also led to Craig’s affirmation of admittedly heretical positions concerning God’s will and the the Son’s procession from the Father. By playing by the atheist’s rules, Craig and others may be handing over Christian orthodoxy in order to save (some kind of) theism.

I think the problem with most of these incoherency arguments, and many modern apologetic attempts to answer them by rethinking God’s attributes, is that they assume we can define God’s attributes in a univocal (same) manner according to how they are found in creatures. Definitions from finite reality are simply “blow them up” to the “size” of God (i.e., infinite).  For example, God’s omniscience (all-knowing) is defined as “knowing all true propositions” – as if making man’s limited knowledge of true propositions unlimited is all that is necessary to describe God’s knowledge. The problem is that such a method actually defines God’s attributes as “infinite finitude” or “limitless limits.” It is easy to see how contradictions will arise when an attribute of God is defined as an unlimited version of a necessarily limited concept. In theistic ontological disproofs, the atheist is simply noting this outcome.

Medieval Theology

Admittedly, in speaking about God, our language is using limited modes of expression. It must, for we have no other means of communication. All the words we have at our disposal are labels for things we experience in reality, and everything we experience is limited. It might seem, then, that univocal God-talk is all that is available to us if we are to say anything true about him. But because God transcends his limited creation, no concepts are attributable to God in the same way. On the other hand, we can say true things about God. So there must be a third way. That way is analogy.

In analogical talk, words mean similar things but are not univocal. We can speak of a  good knife and a good shoe, or say food is healthy and people are healthy. The common term in these pairs of statements have the same logical meaning, but do not pick out the same ontological reality. So while we can define “good” as “that which increases a thing’s ability to perform its function” we do not thereby say that “sharpness” in a good knife is the same as “comfort” in a shoe. Thus, in analogy we must know a thing’s nature – what it is, or what it is for – before we can know the meaning of the words used concerning it. For example, if I say, “My wife is a rose,” one immediately perceives that I am saying she is beautiful. Why not that she grows in the ground or photosynthesizes light? Because in knowing both the nature of a woman and the nature of a flower we can pick out logical similarities between them (e.g., beauty, softness, etc.) exclude dissimilarities (e.g., thorns, photosynthesis), then apply those logical similarities to the ontological realities.

With God we must continually purify our creaturely language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound, or imperfect. If we do not, we can easily be misled into thinking that the thoughts in our minds evoked by the terms we use in God-talk are really what they are in God. As Michael Martin himself notes:

“ordinary men tend to understand God in ways that are familiar to them despite the protests of theologians and intellectual ministers. As a result, God tends to be conceived of in the image of a man – a man much more powerful, moral, knowledgeable, and so on than ordinary men.”

Craig seems to agree with this assessment when he bemoans the problem of analogy:

"While we can say what God is not like, we cannot say what He is like, except in an  analogical sense–which must in the end fail, since there is no univocal element in the predicates we assign to God–, leaving us in a state of genuine agnosticism about the nature of God. Indeed, on this view God really has no nature; He is simply the inconceivable act of being. Why should we adopt so extraordinary a doctrine?"

I would say the reason we should accept such an “extraordinary doctrine” is that God is truly extra-ordinary! If God transcends all we know from finite reality, then we do not know his infinite nature directly. If we do not know God’s nature directly, then our words (which communicate only the finite reality in our minds) will fail to communicate the ontological essence of God – even when they are true statements. But we can know the truth of propositions about God without knowing God’s essence. For example we can know much about a person by looking at a painting of her, but paintings do not give us the true essence of a thing (one is paint on canvas, another is a human being). Another example: a child can know what it is to love pizza, love his toys, and love his parents – but when he considers that his parents love each other he does not really know what that love is. However, he can make true statements about their love and recognize their kind of love when he grows older and experiences it himself.

No creaturely words are used univocally (i.e., with the same meaning) of God and us; nor are they simply used equivocally (i.e., with two completely different meanings). Rather, God talk is analogical (i.e., in a way partly the same and partly different). So we must not confuse what we are thinking when we say something of God with what is literally true of him. Our talk of God is analogical – partly alike (univocal) and partly unlike (equivocal). We can thus speak truthfully of God in several ways:

• Negation of the Limited (e.g., infinite, eternal, aseity, impassibility).
• Super-Eminent Affirmation of the Unlimited (e.g., omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient).*
• Metaphor (e.g., God’s “arm,” God’s “repentance,” “fire,” “rock”).

To say this leads to “genuine agnosticism about the nature of God” or the view that “God really has no nature” is to confuse what we can know about God with knowing God. Knowing God is not simply affirming true propositions about him – it is having his very essence in our minds. As finite creatures, we cannot know infinite reality in this way. But we can know true statements about God. Univocity is not found in the ontological referents of words, but in their abstract definitions. Knowing that good is “comfortable” when said of a shoe (because a shoe’s purpose is comfort) and that good is “sharp” when said of a knife (because a knife’s purpose is to cut) does not help me know what good is in anything else unless I know what that thing is. But I can abstract from its usage that “good” means “attains to its purpose.” Thus I can affirm statements about another thing’s goodness when I know what it is. Since I do not fully know the ontological reality being picked out by the word when it is used of God, I may not know what it is (= have it existing in my mind) – but I can affirm that the statement “God is good” is true.

Conclusion

Good theology begins with proper metaphysics – not by simply denying finitude to finite concepts. This is why theological definitions based on classical metaphysics of God’s perfections often sound so obtuse:

If the doctrine of analogy is correct, the linguistic precision with which these atheists (and their apologist correlatives) approach ontological disproof arguments is simply not available for use. Finite univocal concepts are necessarily incoherent when applied to an infinite being, and so their use will naturally result in contradictions. While perhaps too unwieldy for contemporary analytic philosophers, these more precise definitions do not open themselves to the same kinds of critiques when understood analogically.
 
 
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NOTE: Today we continue our six-part series by Karlo Broussard on a metaphysical proof for God's existence. The posts will run each of the next two Mondays:

• Part 1 - Why Must There Be at Least One Unconditioned Reality?
• Part 2 - The Absolute Simplicity of Unconditioned Reality
• Part 3 - The Absolute Uniqueness of Unconditioned Reality
• Part 4 - The Key Divine Attributes of the Absolutely Unique and Simple Unconditioned Reality
• Part 5 - Key Attributes: Perfection and the Three Omnis
• Part 6 - Important Features of the Metaphysical Proof

 
Readers who have read the previous posts in this series on demonstrating God’s existence will recall how we’ve arrived at a reality that is worthy of the traditional term “God.” We demonstrated that such reality must be unconditioned reality, absolutely simple (i.e., unrestricted in its act of existence – pure being or pure existence itself), absolutely unique, immutable, eternal, immaterial, and the continuous creator of all else that is.

In the previous installment of this series, we left off with the question, “Can we go further in deducing key attributes for the one unconditioned reality that have been classically ascribed to God?” As indicated, the answer is yes. The attributes that I will consider for this post are absolute perfection and the three “omnis” – omnibenevolence (all-good), omnipotence (all-powerful), and omniscience (all-knowing).

Let’s take absolute perfection first. How do we know that the unconditioned reality is absolutely perfect? The answer lies in the understanding of what imperfection is.

Something is imperfect to the degree that it fails to realize or actualize an inherent potential that is present by virtue of its nature – a privation of what ought to be there. For example, an imperfect tree would be a tree whose roots do not hold the amount of water that it needs to be healthy. An injured animal that could not realize the ends its nature intends would be an imperfect animal. A human action that fails to realize its end, namely the good, would be an imperfect human action. So, imperfection is proportionate to the degree an inherent potential within a thing is unrealized or unactualized. But, as suggested in the previous post of this series in relation to the attribute of immutability, the unconditioned reality does not have any potentiality and is pure actuality – this means that no aspect of its being is unactualized or unrealized. Therefore, the unconditioned reality must be absolutely perfect.

Now, in regard to the three “omnis” – omnibenevolence (all-good), omnipotence (all-powerful), and omniscience (all-knowing) – one can arrive at them as a whole from the attribute of absolute perfection as well as from distinct lines of reason respective to each one.

Consider first the line of reason from the attribute of absolute perfection. If the one unconditioned reality was not all-good, was not all-powerful, or was not all-knowing, then it would lack some aspect of goodness, power, or knowledge. But the unconditioned reality cannot lack any aspect of being since it is absolutely perfect (as demonstrated above). Therefore, the unconditioned reality must be all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing.

Now, the line of reason that is distinctive to the attribute of omnibenevolence (all-good) is the scholastic principle that goodness is convertible with being. Basically ‘X’ is good when it succeeds in being the kind of thing it is. To put it another way, ‘X’ is good insofar as it possesses what is required for it considered as what it is by nature. For example, in as much as a cat exists it is good because it succeeds in being a cat – it possesses what we expect for something to have if it has cat nature. This is still the case even if the cat is sick and therefore imperfect. Notice the strong connection between goodness and being. Something is good in as much as it succeeds in being. As St. Thomas Aquinas writes, “Goodness and being are really the same. They differ only conceptually...Something is obviously good inasmuch as it is a being.”¹ Now, since the unconditioned reality is pure being itself it must therefore also be all-good (or omnibenevolent).

So, if there is a distinct line of reason for omnibenevolence, what about omnipotence? Recall from the third installment of this series that the unconditioned reality cannot have any real or really possible incompatible state of being on the same level of simplicity that would be excluded from it. This is simply another way of saying that no real or really possible being can exist without being existentially dependent on the one unconditioned reality. Therefore, there is no real or really possible being that is outside the range of the unconditioned reality’s power for being the ultimate ground of existence. In this sense the unconditioned reality is omnipotent or all-powerful.

Finally, we come to the line of reason distinctive for the attribute of omniscience, which obviously involves intelligence. So, first, we have to ask, “How do we know that the unconditioned reality is an intelligent being?” and then we can answer the question involving omniscience.

The first path for arriving at the unconditioned reality being endowed with intelligence is by way of the immateriality of the unconditioned reality. According to St. Thomas Aquinas², the capacity to know is in proportion to the degree of freedom from matter. In short, the principle is based on the classical understanding of knowledge. Knowledge is the receiving of forms immaterially. For example, I observe Fido the dog and abstract the form or the essence of dogness which now also exists in my mind. But that form exists in the mind immaterially because it does not include the particular dog Fido nor does it include any other aspect of the material order (e.g., size, shape, weight, color, etc). Hence knowledge is the possession of forms immaterially. So, as Aquinas concludes, the degree that something is free from matter is the degree to which it will have knowledge. Now, the unconditioned reality is purely immaterial. Therefore, it follows that the unconditioned reality must be endowed with intelligence.

The second path for arriving at the attribute of intelligence is by way of the principle of proportionate causality. Such a principle states that whatever perfection is in the effect must in some way be in the cause, whether it is present formally (it exists in the cause in the same manner), eminently (it exists in the cause in a most excellent way), or virtually (the cause has the power to produce the perfection).

Now, consider the fact that the unconditioned reality is the Creator or cause of all other things that exist (the ultimate fulfillment of the conditions of every conditioned reality). This is simply another way of saying that the unconditioned reality is giving existence to things constituted of forms. Therefore, according to the principle of proportionate causality, the forms must in some way exist in the immaterial unconditioned reality. But for forms to exist in immateriality is the essence of knowledge. Therefore, the unconditioned reality must have knowledge; hence it must be an intelligent being.

So, now we’re in a position to address the question of omniscience (all-knowing). The omniscience of unconditioned reality simply follows from the unconditioned reality’s omnipotence. Recall that there can be no real or really possible being that is beyond the scope of the unconditioned reality’s power to ground existence. Now, it’s reasonable to conclude that if the unconditioned reality is and would be the ground for the existence of any real or really possible being other than itself, then it would know those real or really possible things. Therefore, there is nothing that does exist or could exist that is not within the range of the unconditioned reality’s thoughts. In this sense the unconditioned reality is all-knowing or omniscient.

So, in conclusion, there must exist one and only one unconditioned reality in all of reality. That one unconditioned reality must be absolutely simple in the metaphysical sense – it must be pure being or pure existence. Furthermore, the absolutely simple and unique unconditioned reality must be the continuous creator of all else that is. It must also be immutable, eternal, immaterial, and absolutely perfect. Finally, it must be omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. I think that such a being is worthy of the traditional term “God.” Therefore, God, as defined, exists.

With the metaphysical demonstration now completed, I would like to highlight in my next and final post why such a demonstration is so important in the modern debate on God’s existence with an eye on some common objections from atheists.
 
 
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