NOTE: This is the second of a two-part series. Read part 1 here.

With the accidentality and priority of being for sensible things now in place, there is only one preliminary metaphysical principle that we need to establish before we can defend Premise 1 (from the first part in this series) and that is the fact that every particular thing—whether sensible or non-sensible (immaterial)—whose being is accidental and prior to its nature must receive being from an agent outside itself, i.e., an efficient cause.

First, whatever is accidental does not exist in its own right but is dependent upon a substance. (Remember the redness of the triangle mentioned earlier.)

Second, since being is an accident in the “wide sense” of the term for such things under consideration, it must be dependent upon a substance.

Third, it can’t be dependent upon the substance (think “house”) that it actuates due to its priority. If being was dependent upon the substance that it actuates, then the substance would be prior to its act of being. But if the substance (“house”) was prior to its act of being then it would be nothing since it would not have its act of being. In other words, the house would not exist. But the house does exist. Therefore, the act of being of something for which being is accidental cannot depend on the substance its actualizing.

Therefore, the act of being for a thing whose being is accidental and prior to its nature must be dependent upon some substance other than the substance that it makes actual—i.e., the thing cannot give itself being but must receive being from something else.

Now, to give being to something is to cause it through efficient causality. Therefore, anything whose being is other than its nature must receive its being by an efficient cause other than itself.

Can All of Reality Consists Only of those Things Whose Being is Accidental and Prior to its Nature?

With all our preliminary metaphysical principles established, we can now move to defending Premise 1. The basic question is, “Can all of reality consist only of things whose being is accidental and prior to its nature—things that can only receive being from an efficient cause outside themselves?”

To begin answering this question, consider the hypothetical scenario if all of reality consisted only of things whose being was accidental and prior to its nature—things whose act of existence did not belong to their nature.

If this was the case, then every particular thing that makes up “reality” would be a nature that was existentially neutral—a thing that is merely open to receiving being. In this scenario reality would consist only of natures—whether a finite or infinite amount (the quantity does not matter)—that contained no being.

This would be analogous to a series of interlinked train cars that has no engine car. No matter how many cars one posits in the series, no train car would ever have motion.

Similarly, if every particular thing within “reality” was something whose being was accidental and prior to its nature—something whose act of being did not belong to its nature—then reality would only consist of what philosophers call “existential zeroes”—natures with no being. But if reality only consisted of natures that contain no being, then no particular thing would exist; and if no particular thing would exist in all of reality, then nothing would exist; hence Premise 1. In other words, in this hypothetical scenario being would never get into the system of reality.

The Rest of the Story

But the fact that I’m writing and you are reading this article indicates that being (existence) has entered the system.

Therefore, all of reality cannot consist only of those things whose being is accidental and prior to its nature; hence the conclusion.

Another way to state the conclusion is that there must be some entity whose being is not accidental and prior to its nature but coincident with and essential to it. In other words, for such an entity its being would be its nature—it would not possess being but would be being itself—its nature would be “to be.”   This reality is what Scholastic philosophers call “subsistent being,” which simply denotes that the substance (a word that is closely related etymologically with “subsistent”) one arrives at through philosophical reasoning is being itself.

Is “Subsistent Being” God?

With the existence of “subsistent being” established, the next question is, “What can we know about such a being? Is such a being worthy of the term God?”

First of all, we can say that “subsistent being” would have to be the efficient cause responsible for being entering into the system of reality to begin with. Recall that in the scenario without subsistent being, being could not enter into the system. But being did enter into the system.

So, either being came from sheer nothingness or from subsistent being itself. If being came from sheer nothingness then there would be no reason why there is being rather than non-being. But to say that there is no reason for being rather than non-being is the same as saying there is nothing to distinguish being from non-being, in which case being and non-being would be one and the same which is absurd. Therefore, being cannot come from sheer nothingness. Therefore, the fact that there is something rather than nothing must be due to subsistent being itself—it’s the efficient cause of being.

Now, subsistent being is not merely the efficient cause of being entering into the system at some point in the past, but it must be the continuous cause of being for things here and now. Consider the fact that natures (essences) are conjoined to the act of being (existence) right here and right now. This is either due to themselves, some other nature for which being is accidental and prior, or subsistent being. Obviously we can’t appeal to a thing’s own nature to explain its continued existence when we can’t even appeal to it to explain it coming into existence in the first place (see the third preliminary metaphysical principle above). Furthermore, we definitely can’t appeal to some other nature of the same type less we end up with the same problem. Therefore, the continued existence of any particular thing whose being is accidental and prior to its nature must be due to subsistent being; thus subsistent being is the continuous source of being for all else that is besides itself.

Moreover, because subsistent being has existence coincident with its nature and does not have it accidentally but essentially (by nature) it does not depend on any efficient cause outside itself; hence it is an uncaused cause.

From this it follows that subsistent being is first in the order of efficient causality—“first” in the sense of ontological priority (“most fundamental”) and not necessarily temporal priority. As the first efficient cause of being, it is totally outside the series of causality among things for which being is accidental and prior to their nature.

Now, if subsistent being cannot be caused, then it must be pure actuality—void of all potentiality—since all things that are caused involves the actualization of some potency. This further means that subsistent being cannot receive any further perfection to its being otherwise it would be in potency to that perfection; thus it must be perfection in the highest degree.

Again, if subsistent being is pure act void of any potency, then it necessarily follows that subsistent being is incorporeal (immaterial) since everything of a corporeal nature (matter) contains potentiality—subject to taking on different forms.

Subsistent being, or pure act void of potency, is also entirely immutable (changeless) since mutability entails the movement from potency to act.

Eternality follows directly from immutability since all temporal beings are subject to change.

The pure actuality of the subsistent being further leads one to reason that subsistent being is completely unlimited, i.e., infinite—it can’t be restricted to existing in this way instead of that way for if it was it would be in potency to the other modes of being, which is absurd.

It must also be absolutely simple—void of any composition (e.g., form-matter and/or essence-existence) since the unity of nature and being is the very understanding of “subsistent being.” One can also reason that composite parts are in potency with respect to the whole, which of course cannot be so with the pure actuality of subsistent being.

Finally, the question becomes, “Can there be more than one of these things?” This brings us to the final attribute for this article, namely unicity. If there were a multiplicity of subsistent beings (pure acts of existence), then there necessarily would have to be a differentiating factor in at least one of them. But if one of them had a factor that differentiates its act of existence from the other act of existence, then that factor would be distinct from its act of existence, in which case it would not be absolutely simple, which is incoherent for subsistent being.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, while I have a tremendous respect for the great theistic apologist of modernity and the arguments they employ, I must say that I find myself enamored by the breadth and depth of the Thomistic framework for natural theology. Where the rope ends for many popular theistic arguments in modern thought, such as a Creator that is very powerful but not pure power itself, beyond our time but not atemporal, one being among many but not pure being itself, it continues for the subsistent being arrived at in the Thomistic framework of thought.

So, unbelievers need not wander in the darkness of unbelief any longer. The light of the Angelic Doctor that shines in this proof and others like it has the power, I believe, to illumine the path to the God whom Thomistic philosophers know as ipsum esse subsistens and whom theologians know as “I Am Who Am.”

NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series. The second part will be shared on Wednesday.

Does God exist? Readers here at Strange Notions are well aware that throughout the centuries there have been no few attempts in constructing arguments to support an affirmative answer to this question. This is no less true today (I previously took a shot at making my humble contribution to the discussion here at Strange Notions, which you can read in six parts). Christian philosophers have put forth a considerable amount of effort in constructing supporting arguments for God’s existence. As good as some of these arguments are, however, in my opinion they often fall short in accomplishing what arguments in the Thomistic tradition accomplish.

For example, the transcendent creator that one arrives at in the modern presentations of the Kalam cosmological argument does not escape the question “What created the creator?” Such a creator, at least without employing Thomistic metaphysical principles, can only be seen as very powerful but not pure power or act itself—the purely actual being. The Kalam creator is merely a being among other beings and not the ipsum esse subsistens (“subsistent being itself”) of the Thomistic tradition that makes the question “What created the creator?” as incoherent as the question “Who is the bachelor’s wife?” Furthermore, the transcendent creator of the Kalam argument, as presented in modern formulations, only escapes the boundaries of physical time but does not escape what the medieval philosophers called aeviternity (outside of temporal, material existence but still not the absolute eternity of God – i.e., the mode of being of the angels). The Kalam creator of modern arguments is still subject to movement from potency to act; thus subject to change; thus subject to being caused; hence once again the question “What created the creator?”

The purpose of this two-part series is to offer a metaphysical approach to God’s existence that follows closely the Thomistic tradition (a bit different than my previous set of articles on God’s existence posted here at Strange Notions) and is not subject to the weaknesses mentioned above. The methodology employed for the present approach is partially inspired by Fr. Joseph Owens’ method found in his book entitled An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, which in turn draws from St. Thomas Aquinas’ “existential proof” as found in his work entitled De Ente Et Essentia (On Being and Essence). The argument presented in this article takes the modus tollens form of a conditional syllogism:

Premise 1: If all of reality consisted only of those things whose being is accidental and prior to its nature—i.e., a thing that does not have being by nature—then nothing would exist.
 
Premise 2: But things do exist.
 
Conclusion: Therefore, all of reality cannot consist of only things whose being is accidental and prior to its nature. There must exist within all of reality at least one thing that has being essentially and whose act of being is coincident with its nature—i.e., its nature and being are one and the same.

For the present article I will assume that the reader affirms Premise 2—namely that he or she and the world around us exists. Consequently, Premise 1 will be the sole focus for arriving at the conclusion but only after three preliminary metaphysical principles are established, which are drawn from Fr. Owens book mentioned above: 1) the accidentality of being to nature in sensible things, 2) the priority of being to nature in sensible things, and 3) every entity whose being is accidental and prior to its nature—whether sensible or non-sensible (immaterial)—it must receive being by some agent outside itself.

After we arrive at the type of being stated in the conclusion, we will then proceed to deduce the various attributes that make such a being worthy of the traditional term God.

The Accidentality of Being for Sensible Things

Concerning sensible things, metaphysicians often speak of at least a conceptual distinction between what a thing is and that it is—the distinction between the nature (essence) of a thing and its being (existence). But is there any justification for such an idea? Fr. Joseph Owens offers two lines of reason by which one can arrive at this conclusion.¹

The first line of reason considers the two ways in which a sensible thing can have being. First, a thing can have being in the world that exists outside thought or imagination. For example, a house may have being today in the world outside the minds of the neighborhood residents though not tomorrow if the city is going to demolish it to make room for downtown parking. This way of existence is called real being.

The other way that something may exist or have being is in the mind or imagination—what metaphysicians call cognitional being. For example, the aforementioned house would have existed in the mind of the architect (cognitional being) before it existed in the outside world (real being). Or the house could exist in the mind of the residents (cognitional being) while the house is standing and even after it is destroyed.

So, with the distinction between real being and cognitional being in place, the question arises, “How does this distinction indicate that a thing’s nature and its being are not entirely the same?” To use the aforementioned example of the house and apply it to the above reasoning, one may say that the house has real being today, will lose that way of being tomorrow when it’s demolished, but still retain cognitional being in the minds of the neighborhood residents. If the nature (essence) of the house remains the same as it loses one way of being and acquires another, then apparently the nature of the house is at least conceptually different than its being.²

The second line of reason for demonstrating the distinction between the nature of sensible things and their being follows the abstraction of forms in human intellection. Consider the example of man’s knowledge of a tree. When one observes an oak tree, he or she abstracts the nature (form) of treeness and then is able to apply that idea to any other mode of existence that the nature of a tree may have—such as a pine tree.

Now, the nature (essence) of a tree, in and of itself, cannot include any particular existence it may have. For example, if treeness was determined to exist only in the pine tree way, then no oak trees would exist. Similarly, if treeness was determined to exist only in the oak tree way, then no pine trees would exist. But pine and oak trees do exist. Therefore, treeness itself does not include the oak tree mode of being or the pine tree mode of being. The same would apply for any mode of being for a tree. Consequently, being does not belong to the nature of a tree.

So, in light of the two lines of thought above, one can conclude that the nature of a sensible thing must be distinct from its being. In other words, being lies outside the nature of sensible things.

Now, as metaphysicians point out, if being does not belong to the nature of sensible things, then being must be an accident (i.e., non-essential) for sensible things. This is based on the metaphysical principle that whatever is in a thing that does not belong to it by nature belongs to it accidentally—e.g., the red triangle does not have redness by nature but only accidentally. “But,” one may ask, “How can being be an accident when it transcends (hence the term transcendental) the nine Aristotelian accidental categories of being?” As Fr. Joseph Owens answers in his book, although it cannot be an accident in the “predicamental sense,” or what metaphysicians call a “narrow sense,” it still can be considered an accident in a “wide sense” simply because it is not part of a sensible thing’s nature.³

The Priority of Being to Nature in Sensible Things

The second preliminary metaphysical principle is the priority of being to nature or essence in sensible things.

At first glance it seems pretty obvious that being is prior to nature since if being was not ontologically presupposed, then there would be no nature. “But,” one may object, “Does not being itself arise from composition within the thing, and consists in that composition? For example, being is not found in the mere matter of sensible things nor is it found in the mere form of sensible things but only in the composition of the matter and form. Therefore, it seems that the component parts, namely form and matter in this case, are prior to being.” How does one respond?

As Fr. Joseph Owens explains, the answer lies in the fact that principles of nature that constitute the being of a sensible thing, namely form and matter, are secondary and concomitant aspects under which being is conceptualized and do not express the deepest character of being—namely act or perfection.⁴ Being is the actuality or perfection of whatever is actual or perfect in a thing—it is actuality unqualified.

For example, being is the actuality of the act of being a man or the actuality of the act of being a horse. There can be neither an act of being a man (form and matter) nor an act of being a horse (form and matter) without actuality or being. So, as Fr. Owens concludes in his book, “As an existential composing it [being] is absolutely prior in actuality to the nature it makes be.”⁵ The bottom line is that without being the composite nature of a sensible thing would not exist. Being, therefore, is ontologically prior to nature for sensible things.
 
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post on Wednesday!
 
 
(Image credit: ###)

The presence of our enhanced human consciousness not only differentiates humans from animals, it also aids in making the case for the existence of God. That’s because through our human consciousness we desire five transcendental experiences, none of which are necessary for survival. These five transcendental desires are our yearning for: (1) perfect knowledge/truth, (2) perfect love, (3) perfect justice/goodness, (4) perfect beauty, and (5) perfect home/being.

Most interestingly, any earthly satisfaction of these five inner desires leaves us feeling frustrated and wanting more. That’s because what we desire is a perfect experience of each of these five transcendental desires. But, since perfect knowledge/truth, perfect love, perfect justice/goodness, perfect beauty, and perfect home/being don’t exist here on earth, why do we seek them? It makes no sense for us to seek that which is unattainable. We only seek that which is attainable, if not here then in the hereafter.

What we seek is something transcendental, something beyond our world and beyond our earthly experience. What we seek is God, who is the Perfect Knowledge/Truth, Perfect Love, Perfect Justice/Goodness, Perfect Beauty, and Perfect Home/Being. For as St. Augustine of Hippo wrote nearly 1,600 years ago, “Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

Priest, philosopher, and theologian Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D., has written several books about how our ultimately unfulfilled yearning for these five transcendental experiences provides evidence of the existence of God. Let’s take a closer look at each of these five transcendental desires found within the human condition and how they reveal God's existence.

(1) Desire for Perfect Knowledge/Truth

Even in young children, we find a desire for perfect knowledge when they ask “Why is that?” and when given an answer they then ask the next question, “Well, why is that?” It seems this questioning would go on forever, at least until an adult brings it to an end! This process reveals that children (indeed, all of us) recognize the inadequacy of a partial answer, and that true satisfaction will occur only when a complete and perfect understanding has been achieved.

Humans do not seek just practical knowledge (e.g., “How do I get the food I need to survive?”). Rather, we want to know just for the sake of knowing, and we have an innate desire for a full and complete explanation. This is evident in the ongoing work of science in seeking a more complete understanding of our world. We know we have not yet reached a perfect understanding of our world, so we research and seek more knowledge, more truth.

Interestingly, we know our knowledge is not complete. If we did not know it was incomplete, we would not keep asking additional questions. It is our awareness that there is more to be known at the very moment when something is known which drives us to additional questioning. We have an awareness of the more.

The issue then arises: Why do we continue asking questions every time something is understood, as if we intuitively know that our current knowledge is limited and does not meet our desire to know all that is to be known? How can we be aware of something beyond everything we currently understand? Why do we have an awareness that what we now know is only a partially complete answer?

This intuitive awareness that there is more to be known than what we now know seems to defy a naturalistic explanation. All our knowledge is incomplete and we know it. But why are we aware that there is more to be known beyond what we currently know?

It seems the best explanation is that our conscious desire for perfect knowledge and complete truth has been written in our human nature by God, who is the Perfect Knowledge and Perfect Truth that we seek. This awareness of the more reveals the presence of God to human consciousness and grounds the belief in human transcendentality (the presence of our soul).

(2) Desire for Perfect Love

We humans also have a desire for perfect and unconditional love. However, this desire can mislead us into expecting perfect love from another human being. When the relationship does not fulfill our desire for perfect love, this expectation leads to frustration and quite possibly to a decline in the relationship. For example, as the imperfections in the love of our beloved manifest themselves (e.g., our spouse is not perfectly understanding, kind, forgiving, self-giving, and concerned for me and all my interests), we at first become irritated. This irritation often leads to frustration, which in turn becomes dashed expectations. These dashed expectations may become either quiet hurt or overt demands, both aimed at extracting a more perfect love from our beloved. When this perfect love does not happen, thoughts of terminating the relationship may arise.

Why do we fall prey to such an obvious error? Because our desire is for love to be perfect and unconditional, but the reality is otherwise. We humans just cannot satisfy each other’s desire for perfect and unconditional love, no matter how hard we try. Thus, our dissatisfaction and frustration arise out of a conscious desire for a perfect love, a love that cannot be experienced in our relationships with others here on earth.

But what is the origin of our deep desire and yearning for perfect love? Why would we have this desire for perfect love, especially as it just leaves us feeling dissatisfied and frustrated when we cannot find it with another person? Why do we have an awareness of and desire for a type of love that we have neither known nor will experience from another human being?

It seems we are searching for perfect love in all the wrong places. Our desire for perfect and unconditional love can only be met by the Perfect Love (God). Again, we find that God has implanted in each of us a conscious desire for a perfect love that only God can fulfill.

(3) Desire for Perfect Justice/Goodness

In addition, we have a conscious desire for perfect justice and goodness. For example, even in young children an imperfect expression of justice from their parents will elicit the immediate response, “That’s not fair!” Adults do the same thing. We feel the same outrage toward groups, social structures, and even God when we perceive that we have not been treated fairly. We truly expect that perfect justice ought to happen, and when it doesn’t we feel a profound and deep outrage. We expect more justice and goodness than our finite world can deliver, and this causes outrage and cynicism when it does not come to pass.

Once more, what could be the source of our desire for perfect justice and goodness, especially when it seems well beyond the actual justice and goodness we can possibly experience? Given that our desire for perfect justice/goodness cannot be found in an imperfect world, it seems that its origin is from perfect Justice/Goodness itself. For this reason, philosophers have associated this notion of perfect Justice/Goodness with the presence of God to human consciousness.

(4) Desire for Perfect Beauty

Once in a great while, we think we have found perfect beauty. This might occur while looking at a scene of wonderful natural beauty: a magnificent red sunset over the water or majestic snowcapped mountains against a horizon of blue sky. Yet, even then, we get bored and strive for an even more perfect manifestation of natural beauty--a little better sunset, another vantage point of the mountains that’s a little more perfect.

As with the other transcendentals, we seem to have an innate awareness of what is most beautiful. This incites us to desire a perfectly beautiful ideal, which leads to both positive and negative results. The positive result is the continuous human striving for artistic, musical, and literary perfection. This striving has left a magnificent cultural legacy of architecture, art, music, drama, etc. However, the negative effect is that we grow bored or frustrated with any imperfect manifestation of beauty. For example, a flowering garden can achieve a certain degree of beauty. But our continued desire to improve it only makes us feel dissatisfied when we cannot perfect it indefinitely.

As with the other transcendentals, we are innately aware of and attracted to perfect beauty itself. But where does our conscious sense of perfect beauty (which does not even exist in our world) come from? Since it seems that the notion of perfect Beauty cannot be obtained from a world of imperfect beauty, we are led to the realization that its’ origin arises out of perfect Beauty itself. For this reason, philosophers have associated this notion of perfect beauty with the presence of perfect Beauty (i.e., God) to human consciousness.

(5) Desire for Perfect Home/Being

The fifth transcendental is our desire to be at perfect harmony and peace in our being and in our world. When our desire for perfect home is even partially fulfilled, theologians, saints, and mystics throughout the ages have referred to this as joy, love, awe, unity, holiness, and/or peace. Again, we need to ask what gives rise to our desire for perfect harmony and our yearning to feel comfortably at home in our world? Once more, the origin of this awareness seems to be traceable to the perfect Home itself. For this reason, philosophers and theologians have associated our desire for a perfect home with the presence of God to human consciousness.

In summary, we find evidence of God’s existence in our desire for these five transcendental experiences. Our yearning for “more” leave us with an emptiness that only God can fill. For as C.S. Lewis stated in Mere Christianity, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

God is perfect and wants us to be one with Him. Thus, our inner craving for perfection must come from and is directed towards God alone. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#27) states, “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.”

It's common today to hear both believers and nonbelievers claim that the existence of God is ultimately unknowable, or at least unprovable. According to this view, we're left to take a leap of faith, or else to go with the option we think is more likely.

Classical theism rejects this idea completely. It claims to be able to prove the existence of God - to be able to prove, in fact, that He can't not exist. And what's amazing is that these theists seem capable of following through on this promise. There are several of these non-probabilistic arguments for the existence of God, but one of the strongest (and most misunderstood) is the argument from contingency. This is presented in St. Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways in the Summa Theologiae, although Aquinas actually gives a better version of the same argument in the Summa Contra Gentiles.

To see how the argument works, let's define two of our terms, and then lay out the two syllogisms that get us to a sure knowledge of the existence of God.

What Do We Mean by “Contingent” and “Necessary”?

For this argument to make sense, we need to define a few terms; namely:

• Contingent beings are those being that only exist under particular conditions. They don't have to exist, and they don't always exist. Rather, they come into existence under particular conditions, and require certain conditions to continue to exist. Humanity, for example, requires air, water, carbon, and a whole host of other things. If any of these variables ceased to exist, so would we. In other words, contingent beings are things that could not-be. They exist, but only because certain conditions are met.
• Necessary beings are the opposite. They exist necessarily. Or, if you'll excuse the double negative, necessary beings couldn't not-be. If there were some set of circumstances in which these beings could cease to exist, then their existence would be contingent, and they'd be up there in the first group. This means that necessary beings aren't capable of generation or corruption (that is, of being born or dying).

With that in mind, let's consider the two arguments that bring us to a sure knowledge of the existence of God:

Argument I: Something Necessary Exists

Step 1: We see in the world some things that can be and not-be.

In other words, we see contingent things all around us. We see birth and death, both in the literal sense for organic matter, and in the metaphorical sense: we see galaxies come into, and go out of existence, for example.

This should raise a question for us: Why is there something, rather than nothing? After all, seemingly everything we see could not-be. Keep that question in mind.

Step 2: Everything contingent has some other cause for its being.

Under particular circumstances, a tree will exist. But if those conditions aren't there, the tree will never come into existence; or, if it already exists, it'll go out of existence. So, for example, if the soil temperature suddenly increased a thousand degrees, your tree would quickly blink out of existence. But this means that the tree isn't the cause of its own being. If it were, it could never not-be, and would exist necessarily, not contingently.

And of course, this point isn't limited to trees. It's true of every contingent being, including you and I, the cosmos, etc. So if you say that X is a contingent being, then some conditions (Y) must exist for X to exist.

Step 3: This can't go on infinitely.

If X requires Y to exist, and Y requires Z to exist, you can't just draw that chain out infinitely. At some point, you must arrive at something that does exist, and isn't dependent upon something else for its existence.

Another way to approach this question: what conditions are necessary for you to exist right now? We're talking about the kind of conditions that you literally can't live without, here and now. And there can't be an infinite number of them, or you (and everything else) wouldn't exist.

The branch you're sitting on may be connected to another branch, but at some point, it needs to meet up with something grounded, like a trunk. You can't just have an infinite chain of branches dangling in the air. If literally everything is contingent, there's nothing capable of bringing it from non-existence into existence, or keeping it in existence.

Conclusion: There must be something necessary.

If there's nothing necessary, you end up with the logically-impossible infinite regress described in step 3. So there must be something that can't not exist.

Shrewd atheists will sometimes object at this point that this doesn't prove God. They're right; at this point, we've just shown that at least one thing can't not exist. That could be God, or gods, or angels, or a Demiurge, or matter, or mathematical laws... or more than one of these things.

So we haven't proven monotheism yet. But we've still made some headway: many of the popular atheistic cosmologies actually fail to clear this first hurdle: they assume a universe in which everything comes about under the right conditions, but don't have anyway of accounting for those conditions (or hold that those conditions require other conditions, and so on...).

To get from “something necessary” to “God” requires a second line of argumentation.

Argument II: God Exists

Step 1: Every necessary being either (a) has its necessity caused by something outside of itself, or (b) doesn't.

As Aquinas put it, “every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not.”

What does this mean? Well, imagine a universe in which there were seven eternal angels. Incapable of being born or dying, they're in the category of necessary beings. But we're still left asking, why do these angels exist? The fact that they can't be born or die doesn't finish our inquiry, because it doesn't give an account of their existence. There could just as easily be a universe with a thousand such angels, or none.

So the necessity of these angels is caused by something else: some external cause must exist to account for their timeless existence. They're in category (a).

Step 2: If all necessary beings were in category (a), you would have an infinite regress.

This is a parallel line of argumentation to what we saw in steps 2-3 of Argument I. If everything depends on something else for its existence, how does anything exist?

Step 3: Therefore, not every necessary being has its existence from another. A necessary being exists who has its necessity through itself and so is the cause of the necessary being of any other necessary thing – which being all call “God.”

Let's unpack those conclusions, one by one:

1. A necessary being exists who has its necessity through itself: In other words, Something not dependent upon anything at all to exist. This Something literally can't not exist, in this or any possible universe. (If its existence was contingent upon a particular type of universe, we'd be right back in the infinite regress problems detailed above).
2. A necessary being who is the cause of all other necessary (and contingent!) things: Everything else we've talked about—you and me and all contingent realities, as well as all the necessary realities in category (a)—depends, either directly or indirectly, on this Something to exist. In other words, if this Something didn't exist, everything would instantly blink out of existence.
3. This Something is Unlimited Being: This is implicit, but I wanted to draw it out explicitly. When we're talking about Something that exists necessarily, and isn't determined by anything else, we're talking about Something whose being is necessarily limitless. (If its being were limited by some external cause, where does that cause come from?)
4. This Something is what we call “God”: For those used to thinking of God as a created being, perhaps this seems like a big jump. But we've arrived at the existence of a Something that exists by definition, and exists as “pure Being” or “unlimited Being.” And that's the best definition of God, and the definition of God that He gives (see below).

What's brilliant about this is that we're not left with a probabilistic argument for God. We're not left saying, for example, “given how complex the universe is, it's 99% likely that it was designed by a deity” or something. Rather, we've concluded to a God that must exist, who literally can't not exist. And this conclusion both establishes God's existence, and starts to tell us something about Him.

Of course, it's important to realize the limitations of our approach. Necessarily, we're limiting ourselves to what we can know by reason alone. After all, it would be terribly circular to argue that God exists because the Bible says He does, and we can trust the Bible because God inspired it, etc.

That restriction really is a handicap, because certain things about God can only be known by revelation. For example, you could never arrive at the Trinity from reason alone. Indeed, if everything about God could be known fully by reason alone, there would hardly be any reason for revelation. So unaided reason gets us to the doorway, to see that there is a God. To find out more about this God, we need to let Him introduce Himself.

And quite fascinatingly, when He does so, in Exodus 3:14, it's as YHWH, “I AM WHO AM.” In other words, what we see in revelation corresponds perfectly to what we concluded to by reason alone: a God who exists by definition, and whose existence accounts for the existence of everything else in the universe.
 
 

All people notice that some things cause other things to be (to begin to be, to continue to be, or both). For example, a man playing the piano is causing the music that we hear. If he stops, so does the music.

Now ask yourself: Are all things caused to exist by other things right now? Suppose they are. That is, suppose there is no Uncaused Being, no God. Then nothing could exist right now. For remember, on the no-God hypothesis, all things need a present cause outside of themselves in order to exist. So right now, all things, including all those things which are causing things to be, need a cause. They can give being only so long as they are given being. Everything that exists, therefore, on this hypothesis, stands in need of being caused to exist.

But caused by what? Beyond everything that is, there can only be nothing. But that is absurd: all of reality dependent—but dependent on nothing! The hypothesis that all being is caused, that there is no Uncaused Being, is absurd. So there must be something uncaused, something on which all things that need an efficient cause of being are dependent.

Existence is like a gift given from cause to effect. If there is no one who has the gift, the gift cannot be passed down the chain of receivers, however long or short the chain may be. If everyone has to borrow a certain book, but no one actually has it, then no one will ever get it. If there is no God who has existence by his own eternal nature, then the gift of existence cannot be passed down the chain of creatures and we can never get it. But we do get it; we exist. Therefore there must exist a God: an Uncaused Being who does not have to receive existence like us—and like every other link in the chain of receivers.

Question 1: Why do we need an uncaused cause? Why could there not simply be an endless series of things mutually keeping each other in being?

Reply: This is an attractive hypothesis. Think of a single drunk. He could probably not stand up alone. But a group of drunks, all of them mutually supporting each other, might stand. They might even make their way along the street. But notice: Given so many drunks, and given the steady ground beneath them, we can understand how their stumblings might cancel each other out, and how the group of them could remain (relatively) upright. We could not understand their remaining upright if the ground did not support them—if, for example, they were all suspended several feet above it. And of course, if there were no actual drunks, there would be nothing to understand.

This brings us to our argument. Things have got to exist in order to be mutually dependent; they cannot depend upon each other for their entire being, for then they would have to be, simultaneously, cause and effect of each other. A causes B, B causes C, and C causes A. That is absurd. The argument is trying to show why a world of caused causes can be given—or can be there—at all. And it simply points out: If this thing can exist only because something else is giving it existence, then there must exist something whose being is not a gift. Otherwise everything would need at the same time to be given being, but nothing (in addition to "everything") could exist to give it. And that means nothing would actually be.

Question 2: Why not have an endless series of caused causes stretching backward into the past? Then everything would be made actual and would actually be—even though their causes might no longer exist.

Reply: First, if the Kalam argument is right, there could not exist an endless series of causes stretching backward into the past. But suppose that such a series could exist. The argument is not concerned about the past, and would work whether the past is finite or infinite. It is concerned with what exists right now.

Even as you read this, you are dependent on other things; you could not, right now, exist without them. Suppose there are seven such things. If these seven things did not exist, neither would you. Now suppose that all seven of them depend for their existence right now on still other things. Without these, the seven you now depend on would not exist—and neither would you. Imagine that the entire universe consists of you and the seven sustaining you. If there is nothing besides that universe of changing, dependent things, then the universe—and you as part of it—could not be. For everything that is would right now need to be given being but there would be nothing capable of giving it. And yet you are and it is. So there must in that case exist something besides the universe of dependent things—something not dependent as they are.

And if it must exist in that case, it must exist in this one. In our world there are surely more than seven things that need, right now, to be given being. But that need is not diminished by there being more than seven. As we imagine more and more of them—even an infinite number, if that were possible—we are simply expanding the set of beings that stand in need. And this need—for being, for existence—cannot be met from within the imagined set. But obviously it has been met, since contingent beings exist. Therefore there is a source of being on which our material universe right now depends.
 
 
(Image credit: Playing Piano)

In the course of a discussion on my personal blog about the existence of God and of the miraculous, an unbelieving reader (who strikes me as open to reasonable discussion) wrote me to say:

"All I’m saying is that people everywhere demonstrate a powerful desire to believe that there is intervention in the material universe from outside the material universe."

Except that’s not true.  Lots of people also demonstrate a powerful desire to believe there is no intervention in the material universe.  Even many people who believe in some sort of God do this, because they are deists.

The notion that the existence of God provides nothing but unalloyed consolation—and does not also give reason to have deep fear—entirely overlooks the doctrine of judgment in this life and of hell in the next.  It’s just as easy and plausible to say that atheism is the wish fulfillment fantasy.  It’s also just as useless in getting at the question of whether God exists.  Instead of cheap psychoanalysis of philosophical opponents, I think the smarter approach is to look at the philosophical arguments for the existence of God.

"The problem is, even with that open mind, one still has to continue living a life based on some assumptions about the nature of the universe. Do you stake everything on the possibility it was a god, or do you not? The gaps have to be filled with something."

Actually, here’s the funny thing.  Although Catholic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas (and I) certainly accept the reality of miracles, Thomas doesn’t argue for the existence of God from the gaps.  He doesn’t say, “Here’s some exception to the course of nature (like the Resurrection) or some natural process I can’t explain, therefore God.”  He doesn’t argue for the existence of God from the exceptions to the rules.  Instead, he argues from the Rules.  In short, Thomas doesn’t say, “I don’t know how lightning works, so God.”  He says, “Why are there rules?  Why is there anything?  How is it that reality is intelligible at all?”

Notably, Paul does the same thing.  He doesn't say, "I can't explain the Resurrection, so there must be a God."  He argues for the existence of God just as Thomas does, from the ordinary course of nature, not from the extraordinary exceptions of miracles or inexplicable natural phenomena.  Just like Thomas and the Church, Paul doesn't appeal to amazing esoteric events vouchsafed to the few who see Lazarus raised, but to the many who saw him born.  It is daily bread and the underlying laws of time, space, matter and energy that hold it in being—not multiplied loaves and fishes—that Paul says cannot explain itself.  And it is our refusal to consider that which Paul regards as blameworthy, not for mystics who close their eyes to the Miracles of the Sun, but for ordinary people close their eyes to the implications of broad daylight:

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." (Romans 1:18-20)

The temptation of our age is to say, “Sure.  We can’t answer those questions yet.  But with sufficient advances in science we will someday.”

But no conceivable advance in science will ever answer the questions, “Why are there rules?  Why is there anything?  How is it that reality is intelligible at all?” Those questions are, by their very nature, not “scientific” questions.  Science (as moderns mean it) is the measurement of the metric properties of time, space, matter and energy.  All such science presupposes a metaphysic that is essentially theistic.  That is, it begins with the assumption that the universe has rules intelligible to our minds. You can no more “scientifically” get behind those rules to their source than you can prove that there is no such thing as proof.

But, of course, when you start talking a universe that is fundamentally ordered by rules and of our mysterious power to intellect (read between the lines) of those rules, you inexorably start talking as though the universe is the creation of Mind.  Thomas says, “Yes, because it and we are the product of Mind.”  If you don’t make that presupposition, you can’t do science at all since there is no reason—there can be no reason—to suppose that the universe and your mind correspond to Reason.

Some people think they can get around that by positing a multiverse in which our universe is part of some larger universe that give it its rules and being.  But, of course, that just pushes the question back: Why is there a multiverse? Why is there anything?  And why is the Everything we see contingent and dependent on something else?  How do beings that are always totally contingent (dependent on something else) come into existence?

Sooner or later that points us back to something that is not merely a being but is Being itself: something that simply Is. All created contingent beings participate in and are sustained by the God who is Being.  As Mike Flynn has pointed out, if such self-existent Being could talk, it would say, "I AM."  And by a strange coincidence, that is exactly how the God of some seriously philosophically-unsophisticated semitic Bronze Age shepherds introduced himself to them in Exodus 3.

Now, such a God can, if he chooses, operate outside the normal laws of nature he has created.  And the evidence does, indeed, suggest that he has done so at times.  But Thomas does not look to such evidence to demonstrate God’s existence.  On the contrary, Thomas takes a remarkably evolutionary view of creation:

"Nature is nothing but the plan of some art, namely a divine one, put into things themselves, by which those things move towards a concrete end: as if the man who builds up a ship could give to the pieces of wood that they could move by themselves to produce the form of the ship."

—Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Physics II.8, lecture 14, no. 268

In that, he is following Augustine who also sees creation, not as a series of deus ex machina interferences in nature from a God who tinkers, but as a continuous unfolding of properties invested in nature from the start:

"It is therefore causally that Scripture has said that earth brought forth the crops and trees, in the sense that it received the power of bringing them forth.  In the earth from the beginning, in what I might call the roots of time, God created what was to be in times to come."  [Emph. added]

On the literal meanings of Genesis, Book V Ch. 4:11

So there are really two questions here.  The first—Does God exist?—can be and has been answered by natural reason and does not require special revelation or faith.  Aristotle was able to work it out and lots of others have done so apart from the Christian revelation.

The question of whether that God does miracles is separate and requires faith and openness to revelation.  Like all points of supernatural revelation, it cannot be proven, but all arguments against it can be disproven.
 
 
Originally posted at National Catholic Register. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: USML)