IT IS EVIDENT THAT GOD EXISTS as a conception in our minds. The larger question remains for Christian teaching and moral decision-making as to whether that One who exists in our minds also exists in reality.
Does a being exist whose counsel is infinitely wise, whose power surpasses all temporal powers, whose actions are such that they are worthy of being called infinitely good? (Anselm, Monologium; Proslog.; Calvin, Inst. 1.1.3; Descartes, Method 4, Meditations 3; Witsius, ESS 4: 33).
The question of the existence of God hinges on whether that necessary, eternal being remains merely a conceptual idea that we imaginatively project toward reality, as Feuerbach and Freud thought (Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, Freud, The Future of an Illusion; whose arguments were anticipated by Gregory of Nazianzus sixteen centuries ago, Second Theol. Orat. 18.15) or whether our idea of God’s being is derived from God’s actual being (also Orat. 30; Anselm, Proslog. 2–4; Descartes, Meditations 5). How we answer this determines all that follows in classic Christianity.
Whether the Existence of God Can Be Reasonably Argued
Unlike classical Christianity, modern theology has seldom been organized in the way followed by the classic consensus, namely, by first establishing a clear conceptual idea of God, then asking whether that One exists. Rather, modern theology has typically sought first to establish that “God” in some sense (with spare definition) exists, then secondly to append to that bare definition of God the most vital attributes of the Scripture’s understanding of God—will, spirit, freedom, personhood, justice, and wisdom.
The Classic Beginning Point
Classic Christian teachers have proceeded in the opposite way by first pointing toward the divine attributes attested in Scripture and only then by dealing with arguments for God’s existence.
It has long been recognized that a natural theology that frugally argues for the bare existence of the idea of God has much more modest aims than those required by Christian discipleship and pastoral care. Modern philosophical arguments typically aim at establishing that there is a First Cause or unmoved Mover or cosmic Orderer without any reference whatever to the lofty characteristics attributed to God in Scripture. It is more difficult but more meaningful to establish that God as defined in scriptual teaching exists, rather than that “a Supreme Being” or “that which is necessary” exists (Augustine, On Trin. 5.3; Kierkegaard, Phil. Frag.; Barth, CD 2/1).
Viewed from the ancient ecumenical consensus, this modern method is an inverted way of proceeding from almost nothing to a little less than almost nothing. It invites confusion to try first to prove God’s bare existence and then wait until later to try to tag on the crucial defining qualifications that show more specifically what biblical teaching really means by “God.” Only these appendages to the bare idea of God will give substance to the reality of God as known in the worshiping community.
If nothing whatever is known of the character or attributes of God, it is hardly an exercise of great meaning to prove God’s existence. It is less consequential to faith that “an unmoved Mover” exists than that the caring, covenanting, living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jesus truly lives within history and acts as attested in Scripture (Hilary, Trin. 5.3–25; Calvin, Inst. 1.14.1–3). The most urgent and demanding question for Christian believers is not whether “a supreme being of some kind” exists, but rather whether this incomparably good and powerful and compassionate source and end of all things truly is as revealed in Scripture (Augustine, Expos. on Psalms, Ps. 135:5; On the Profit of Believing).
It is more meaningful to follow the path of early Christian teaching: first to name God rightly, accurately characterizing what scripture means by the sovereign caring God, and only then to ask whether that One is as characterized and whether that set of meanings is true to the facts of life as we know it, and can be accounted for confidently through reason and shared human experience. The search for consensuality has led me to proceed in a way that is unconventional in modern times but traditionally familiar, by first naming God rightly according to scripture, and only thereafter introducing classic ecumenical reasoning concerning the existence of God.
The New Testament and its earliest interpreters such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp of Smyrna were concerned primarily with the proclamation of the love, power, and justice of God the Father through the Son rather than with God’s bare existence. The generation of writings represented by the Epistle to Diognetus, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Didache contained only the slenderest forms of specific theistic arguments for the existence of God. In due time they were followed by cautious emerging forms of theistic reasoning in Christian apologists such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria.
The forthright statement of the nature and character of God indeed has genuine self-evidencing power—for how could something necessary to existence not exist? (Anselm, Monologium 1.1; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q12). But that consensual form of reasoning must now be plausibly set forth.
The Question of God Arises Unavoidably out of Human Existence
To some the existence of God seems so obvious that it hardly can claim to be the subject of serious inquiry or doubt. Yet God’s existence has in fact been doubted and debated (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q1). Others who firmly believe in the existence of God have hesitated to say that it can be convincingly demonstrated or that any argument makes any difference (Augustine, Soliloquies 1. 6–12; John of Damascus, OF 1. 4, 5; Kierkegaard, Concl. Unsci. Post. 1. 2).
To ask whether God exists is to pose a question of fact, not merely of theory. The question is, quite simply: Is this so? To establish a fact is to show the state of things as they are. Fact is distinguished from fancy. In classic Christianity the existence of God is not merely a theory or hypothesis but a necessary axiom of rational minds.
The question is not whether we can conceptualize God, since we have already stated those conceptions in the previous chapter. Now we ask whether these scripturally attested attributes of the conceived divine reality indeed correspond with One who truly exists. This is a poignant human question, which at crisis times becomes a decisive, practical, momentous question (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 2.6; Augustine, Conf. 7.10).
No one can decide this question for another. Everyone listening must judge for him- or herself whether this One truly is (Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel, LCC 18:109; Kierkegaard, Concl. Unsci. Post.).
Yet to decide that this One exists is not quite like deciding that anything else exists. For this decision assumes a wider implication that the decider shall order his or her life around the existence of this One, if this One exists at all. It is not merely a casual or theoretical decision that makes no necessary difference to the way one lives the rest of one’s life (Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel). For if this One exists, then everything else about life must be ordered in terms of this datum. Rightly understood, it is an all-embracing, intrusive question, and for this reason many prefer to dodge it or to proceed as if it were an abstract, theoretical question.
If God exists in the way that classic Christianity teaches, God’s existence implies far more than intellectual consent (Kierkegaard, Either/Or 2, “Ultimatum”). It implies befitting adoration, ceaseless praise of this incomparable being, active love of the most lovable of all beings, a love that manifests itself in the loving of all other beings in relation to this supreme being (Augustine, Conf. 7.1–3). There is an urgent, practical, consequential dimension that attaches itself to the seemingly harmless and simple question, Does God exist?
Can Faith Be Established by Argument?
Before proceeding it is useful to take seriously the curious argument that no argument can have any effect upon whether one believes God exists. Thus our first steps may seem like an unnecessary detour: We must plainly speak about the human corroborative function of reasonable argument in relation to belief. Only then will we be prepared to clarify biblical reasoning concerning the existence of God, after which we will pursue the reasons why the question cannot be evaded, and, in due course, distinguish different types of arguments.
All sincere talk of God’s existence must begin with a humble acknowledgment that our terms cannot encompass the divine reality, even though they can point with reasonable confidence to the living God. The classical formula is: God can be apprehended but not comprehended (Lombard, Sent. 1.3; Tho. Aq., SCG 1.5–7; Heppe, RD: 52). We can know that God truly exists without pretending to know how God exists, or without claiming to know all that God knows about God’s existence. Only the infinite can adequately know the infinite (Gregory of Nyssa, Ag. Eunomius 1. 25).
The only understanding of God we have is acquired while moving “on the way” (theologia viatorum) toward the end, amid the pilgrimage of ambiguous human choices. At journey’s end we hope for a final vision of the perfect being of the beatified (theologia beatorum, Calvin, Inst. 1.2.2; 1.5; Heppe, RD: 5; Schmid, DT: 17). Yet within the frame of this time and this world, something must be said about whether this infinite One exists. Otherwise the misleading impression may be left that Christian teaching appeals merely to mystery or obscurantism and not in any sense to the truth of good sense and the history of revelation (Basil, Letters 235; Augustine, Trin. 8.1; Tho. Aq., SCG 1.10–12).
The worshiping community confesses and intercedes on the basis of, not the theory of God’s existence, but the experience of a multigenerational community of witnesses. The reality of God does not come into being on the basis of the cleverness of our rational arguments. “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know” (Pascal, Pensées, EL: 277). These reasons must be transparently plausible to each individual believer, but more so they are credibly shared by an extensive community of discourse that has two thousand years of experiential evidence to offer. The cumulative confidence emerging from this historical evidence does not make rational arguments meaningless, but it does reinforce and confirm the rational arguments (Origen, Ag. Celsus 7.37; Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 7).
Whether God really exists as avowed remains a question to be assessed as other profound questions are evaluated on the basis of such knowledge of ourselves, our history, and social experience as it is possible to bring together into a plausible pattern of internally corresponding meaningfulness. It must be tested on the basis of all the known facts we can reasonably ascertain (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.3). It appeals, as do other inquiries, to clear perception and reasonable judgment based upon wide observation, and especially the broadest possible data base, namely, universal history, as well as upon moral, aesthetic, or intuitive arguments (Clement of Alex., Stromata 2.2; Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 3–8; ST 1 Q1).
Christianity shares with Judaism, Islam, and other theistic religions a belief in God’s existence (John of Damascus, OF 1.1; Qur’an 3:3; Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed; Tho. Aq., SCG 1.4). To discount all of these believers is to dismiss pertinent evidence from the majority of human beings who have lived and who are living. From its beginnings, wherever Christianity was preached among those who did not have a monotheistic faith in a personal God, it was necessary to explain why the existence of such a God is a pivotal axiom of Christian teaching (as in Acts 17:22–31). Whenever the gospel was proclaimed to the Gentiles, this question had to be answered: In what way might the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus, correspond to Greek and Roman assumptions about whether gods exist or God exists? (1 Cor. 3:3; Rom. 9–11; Col. 1:9; Acts 24:3).
Classical Christian teaching has held that these rational arguments are confirmatory to faith. They corroborate what faith knows, rather than produce or establish faith (Anselm, Proslog., preface). These are not each one independent, hermetically sealed, unchallengeable “proofs,” but taken together, they confirm and validate what faith already knows of God’s existence and to corroborate faith’s persistently intuited conviction that God exists (Augustine, Conf. 3, 4). They are a form of loving God with the mind (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.91; ST 1 Q11). Yet the historic church has never taken these arguments with absolute seriousness, as if everything hinged upon the success of our arguments about God. God does not depend upon our thoughts about God (Gregory of Nazianzus, On the Great Athanasius; Augustine, CG 11.2–6; Calvin, Inst. 1.5, 6).
The Cumulative Weight of the Arguments
Despite limits, the classical theistic arguments for God’s existence have a cumulative effect when taken seriously (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 28.6, Second Theol. Orat.; F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theol. 2.4). No single argument can be sufficient for so great a reality. Any detached argument may be found lacking in this or that way, but taken together they have been held by the consensus of faith to be sufficient to bind the inquiring, rational, self-critical mind to the sure and sufficient knowledge that this incomparable, unsurpassed, active, caring God really exists (Tho. Aq., SCG 50.5; Watson, TI 1:263).
Those who set forth evidence for the existence of God do not present it in the same way that one would offer evidence in a coroner’s laboratory. For we are not dealing here with a manipulatable, quantifiable, inert object (Origen, Ag. Celsus 7.46; John of Damascus, OF 1.1–3), but with the living God. Whether the living God in fact has the character attested by Scripture can only be established on the basis of a wide correspondence of insights from widely different spheres of knowing—natural, moral, intuitive, logical, scientific, and religious. The conclusion that God exists as revealed is seldom firmly reached on the basis of a single syllogism of reasoning, but rather on the basis of subtly diverse insights carved out of one’s own personal history, yet brought together intuitively in a vast inward yes that has rich plausibility if not certitude (Augustine, Conf. 8). Although this plausibility may grow slowly, in time it may come to have the character of a life-shaping conviction (Kierkegaard, Concl. Unsci. Post.).
Consequently, not every argument that follows will be, or should be expected to be, sufficient to all conceivable circumstances. Doubt creatively accompanies each of these arguments. Doubting the arguments is an appropriate way of seeking to ascertain how firmly they are indeed rooted in reality. A critical, probing faith is a necessary and useful stage toward an assured and confirmed faith (Job 3:1–26; Clement of Alex., Stromata 8.9; Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel).
The Biblical Assumption that God Exists
In the Bible, God’s existence was so widely assumed that it was thought that “only a fool would say in his heart ‘there is no God’” (Ps. 14:1). It does not seem to have occurred to most of the prophets and apostles that there is a compelling need formally to prove or even argue in detail for the existence of God.
Hilary argued that there is nothing so proper to God as to be (Trin. 1. 5). Augustine thought that God’s existence was more certain than our own (Conf. 7.10). Scripture’s first phrase, “In the beginning, God” (Gen. 1:1), unmistakably expresses this prevailing biblical assumption: It is not that we arrive at a well-argued conclusion that God is, but from the beginning God is, and only later may we perhaps debate, think, and argue about it (Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 4). Scripture does not teach that “in the beginning we have a rational capacity that enables us to generate the idea of God’s existence, which in due time is able to conclude that God exists.” Rather, before any human rationality or argument, there is God.
Nonetheless, rational and experiential argument has a modest but useful function in the formation of souls. Personal faith may not be borne of argument, but it may be supported and confirmed by argument (Lactantius, Div. Inst. 7.9; Anselm, Proslog. 1). The reason faith persists in looking for rational clarity and confirmation of its premises is this: Faith’s premises are felt to be so valuable that they deserve the best intellectual reflection possible to confirm argumentatively what faith already knows inwardly (Augustine, Letters 102, 103; Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 10).
Why Ask?
When we fail to use our best intelligence around such pivotal questions as the existence of God, we diminish the power of faith by the dullness of our minds. We are being called to love God with our minds, testing the validity of every argument concerning God (Augustine, Soliloquies 1. 3; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q2).
Thomas Aquinas began Summa Theologica by playfully testing out two erroneous views that demean all theistic reasoning: (1) Arguing the existence of God seems worthless because there can be no argument about a self-evident truth or about an undemonstrable mystery. Why waste mental energy trying to think about whether God exists, some say, if God necessarily exists? (2) If we already have a solid, sincere faith, we surely would not want to detract from piety or faith by substituting argument for it, some say. Both these assertions tend to be a lazy embarrassment to a reasoned faith, which could, if it utilized its intellectual abilities, provide plausible reasons for its faith (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q2, SCG 1.5). When we examine the main alternatives to theistic reasoning, we find the critics of theism just as heavily laden with difficulties (Garrigou-Lagrange, God, I; Tillich, Syst. Theol., I; Mascall, He Who Is: 41; Hick, The Existence of God: 6). Consistent skepticism argues not only that we cannot know anything about God, but that we cannot reliably know anything about anything (Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: 57).
Countering these cynical responses, five types of argument have been predominant in classical Christian theistic reasoning:
We will set forth the principal forms of these arguments as they have appeared perennially in classical Christian teaching.
How to Reason from Order or Design
The argument from order or design, the most ancient, simplest, and clearest of all theistic arguments, is easiest to apply to the practice of Christian counsel and spiritual formation. Aristotle thought that it was known by Hermotimus of Clazomenae (Metaphy. 1 13, 984b). An ancient fragment of Anaxagoras stated the essential argument: “All things that were to be, all things that were but are not now, all things that are now or that shall be, Mind arranged them all” (Anaxagoras frag. B 12). Adapted by Augustine (Conf. 11.5; Letters 137), this argument became the fifth of Thomas’s five ways, called the teleological argument because it argues toward God from purposes and ends (i.e., final causes, Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q2.3; SCG 1.13). It has two principal forms: order and design.
The Argument from Order
The premise: Order is everywhere observable. Even the doubtful or despairing can see that there is order—a useful arrangement of things in a system of nature that implies intelligence and purpose in the world. The universe is characterized by extraordinarily complex layers and modes of order. It is implausible that these could have occurred by chance (Athanasius, Ag. Heathen 38).
It remains a premise of scientific inquiry that the world is characterized by intelligibility, which itself is often called the “natural order.” Even when physicists discover some irregular principle of indeterminacy, such as the Heisenberg principle, when nature at times appears unpredictable, there is, even in the principle of random indeterminacy of atomic interaction, a moving wave of meaning and order. Careful observation of plant and animal life, physical elements, centrifugal forces, and stellar movements yields that overwhelming conviction of orderliness (Gen. 1; Ps. 8; Lactantius, Div. Inst. 1.2; Gregory of Nyssa, On Infants’ Early Deaths).
The heart of the argument: If there is any order at all in the world, it is necessary to hypothesize an orderer, not necessarily a divine orderer, but an orderer of some kind (Augustine, Conf. 11.5). There cannot be orderliness or purposiveness without a ground of order or a mind that shapes the order. Governance in the world implies some kind of governor (Plato, Laws 10.904; Cicero, “On the Nature of the Gods” 2,5; for a critique see Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 11; Dialogues, 5; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason).
Formally the argument may be summarized in this way: (a) The visible world is a cosmos, an orderly unity whose order is constant, uniform, complex, and intrinsic to the universe itself. (b) Such an order cannot be explained unless it is admitted that the universe has a cause that displays intelligence capable of bringing it into being. (c) Therefore, such a cause of the universe exists, which is to say, God exists as the intelligent cause of the universe (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q2.3).
Discordant elements cannot work harmoniously together unless by some intelligent direction (John of Damascus, OF 1. 3). “In the world we find that things of diverse natures come together under one order, and this is not rarely or by chance, but always or for the most part. There must therefore be some being by whose providence the world is governed. This we call God” (Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 13). The argument was anticipated in Scripture: “Does he that planted the ear not hear, he that moulded the eye not see?” (Ps. 94:9). “Who can look at the world and not sense there there is a God?” (Hilary, Hom. on Ps. 52.2).
The argument from order cannot be stated without implying two of the divine attributes previously discussed: the omniscience by which God is able fully to know the created order so as to order it, and the omnipotent power by which God is able to bring such an order into being. This theistic argument offers a reason to believe that the all-wise and almighty God to whom Scripture witnesses, exists in reality and not merely as a conception in our minds (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 28.2; Calvin, Inst. 1.5.5; 1.14.20).
The power of the argument from order is best seen by trying to take seriously its contrary hypothesis, that there is no cause whatever of the order observed. For then one is attributing the order to chance, which still leaves the order unexplained. To say the order occurred by chance means either that we are unable to ascertain what the cause is while nonetheless affirming that some cause must exist, or that there is no cause and events occur without any reason or possible explanation (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q105; Calvin, Inst. 1.5.11; 1.16.5). Both of these ways of viewing chance fail to account convincingly for the primary evidence—order in the world—which demands some sufficient explanation. This argument is on some occasions found useful in caring for persons trapped in syndromes of doubt or despair, to remind them that their doubt or despair exists within an intelligible order (Eccles. 2:20; 1 Cor. 1:8; Clement of Alex., Stromata 7.7; Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel).
The Argument from Design
The classic statement of the argument from design came from Thomas Aquinas: “We observe that things without consciousness, such as physical bodies, operate with a purpose, as appears from their co-operating invariably, or almost so, in the same way in order to obtain the best result. Clearly then they reach this end by intention and not by chance. Things lacking knowledge move toward an end only when directed by someone who knows and understands, as an arrow by an archer. There is consequently an intelligent being who directs all natural things to their ends; and this being we call God” (ST 1 Q2.3).
An arrow moving through the air is a metaphor of a guided, orderly trajectory of an inanimate object moving toward a predetermined end, since the arrow is guided by intelligible forces that determine its path. To have guidance, one must hypothesize a guide. The conceiving of ends, and the choosing of means appropriate for the attainment of ends, can be done only by a personal mind—an intelligent being. If purposiveness is experienced in the world, then one must hypothesize a purposing being (Ps. 8; Chrysostom, Comm. on Ps. 8; Methodius, On Free Will, 2).
The instinct of animals serves as an illustration of an activity toward an intelligible purpose that the animal itself has not understood or foreseen. A bird builds a nest in spring without having been taught. Under the guidance of instinct it fulfills a purpose that it has not grasped: the perpetuation of the species. Although the bird does not understand its own mating and nesting, these are not meaningless or merely shaped by chance, but filled with purpose, with complicated means that tend toward ends unknown but meaningful (Ps 104:1–14).
Similarly: If someone found a watch in a forest, one could assume that some intelligent mind had worked on it and produced it. This conclusion would be even more plausible if one discovered that its complex structure is adapted to the measurement of time (Paley, Natural Theol. I: 37). “I saw houses and knew that the householders were in residence. I saw the world and I understood providence. I saw a ship sink without anyone to steer it, and I noticed the pointless behavior of human beings who were not steered by God. I saw different cities and states well organized and understood that everything holds together by the ordering of God” (Ephrem, Self-examination, ESOO 1:123).
How to Reason from Human Nature: Mind, Human Nature, and General Consent
The second group of theistic arguments hinges on the analysis of human consciousness, human nature, or human social experience as the basis for the necessary conclusion that God exists. They form a bridge between the above argument from design and the moral arguments to be discussed below. All theistic arguments tend to converge in mutual complementarity—one of their most striking features (Tho. Aq., ST 1–2 Q109).
Accounting for the Appearance of Mind in Nature
The emergence of minds in natural history requires the hypothesis that God exists. The argument from mind differs from the arguments from order or design which use largely inanimate or animal metaphors (arrows, clocks, animal adaptation), whereas the argument from mind proceeds from the empirical observation of emerging intelligence in history and natural-historical development, especially human mind.
The pervasive presence of intelligibility in the world and in our minds requires the premise of God. This argument begins with the remarkable fact that intelligent consciousness undeniably exists in the world. Not only is the world itself intelligible, but also our minds are capable of grasping something of that intelligibility. That we live in an intelligible world is a fact that is absolutely necessary to any language or discourse whatever. The premise of intelligibility is a necessary precondition of our minds’ even thinking about anything (Clement of Alex., Stromata 5.13; Calvin, Inst. 1.3). The fact that intelligence exists to apprehend that intelligibility is itself the most astonishing event of natural history’s development.
At times the senses may deceive. The only way we can grasp those deceptions is on the basis of the larger assumption of the intelligibility of things and the trustworthiness of the inquiring mind in ferreting out deceptions. Human reasoning begins with a fundamental trust in its own power of reasoning. Descartes rightly reasoned that the one thing he could not possibly doubt was that he had the capacity to doubt (Descartes, Principles of Philosophy 1. 7). If I can doubt my own thoughts, I must be able to think, to inquire, to examine, and to criticize, and these are functions that could not work without both an intelligible world and a perceiving intelligence.
Human consciousness grows slowly, through adaptation, acculturation, socialization, and education, to understand, explore, question, and grasp the structure, order, and intelligibility of reality. Through the study of chemistry, astronomy, physics, botany, biology, and psychology, we look for reliable knowledge of ourselves and our world. We formulate reliable laws of causation based upon these observations. Then we subject these laws to reexamination, constant scrutiny, and revision. No such examination could occur without the dual premise of the intelligibility of these things and perceiving intelligence (Bonaventure, Breviloquium; Tho. Aq. Comm. on Boethius 5.7).
The scientific enterprise assumes that there is a fundamental correspondence between our minds and the intelligibility of what we can reasonably know (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason). Scientific inquiry appeals to commonly repeatable experiments as the basis of validating that an experience has been accurately and consensually observed (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.7; ST 1 Q1; Nicolas de Cusa, U&R: 241). Logical inquiry appeals to reliable laws and rules of rational deduction and inferences in making conclusions. We assume that these laws observed in nature apply to all cultures. Otherwise they are considered deficient in some way and subject to further investigation and revision (Augustine, Conf. 4.10; CG 12; Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Phil. Works, 2:457).
Intelligence can think about only what is intelligible (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q14.1, I). This conclusion has wide-ranging relevance for Christian teaching about God. There is only one universe. That is what uni-verse means: there is only one (uni) turn (vertere), one circle of being (Gregory of Nyssa, Ag. Eunomius 1.22). If there were two universes, then it would be necessary to hypothesize some relation between these universes, which itself would then be an embracing universe, of which there could be only one. It is precisely this universe in its totality that displays an order or intelligibility that corresponds with the order and intelligibility that we experience in our own minds (Tertullian, Ag. Praxeas 5.6; Tho. Aq., SCG 1.55; Watson, TI 1:271).
If a universe exists, and if our minds are able to grasp anything about it, both it and we must have intelligibility. If intelligibility exists at all, it must have some ground and source (C. S. Pierce, Collected Papers 6: 345; F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theol. 2,4, 4; H. Bergson, Creative Evolution; Calvin, Inst. 1.5; 1.14).
It is implausible to hypothesize a spontaneous emergence of intelligibility for such a massive order of intelligible events and beings as the observed universe, natural history, and human history (Wm. Temple, Nature, Man, and God; Paley, Natural Theol.; S. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity 2: 353).
The point: The intelligibility or mind that we find everywhere in the universe could only be the result of an unsurpassably intelligent being. Reason suggests what Scripture attests: that the One revealed as all-wise reaches out to illumine the human spirit (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q12). As the law of gravity exists prior to our discovering it, as the laws of motion are there prior to our moving anything, so must the larger intelligibility of the world exist prior to any intelligent awareness that we might have of it (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q19).
It is useful here to note the sweeping difference between things and minds. It is misleading to think simplistically of minds as things. Whereas things are inert, minds are alive, conscious and capable of perceptions, feelings, and willing. Finite minds, of course, exist within finite bodies. The body is a thing, but as death shows, the thing a body is without mind is radically different from the thing a body is with mind. Bodies are perceived by minds, never without minds. Here reason intuits what Scripture proclaims clearly: As there cannot be any ordered body or thing without some sort of mind to order it, so there cannot be a human mind or universal history without positing a greater source, ground, and end of human intelligence. This we call God (Lactantius, Div. Inst. 1. 2; Watson, TI 1: 285). This argument is summed up in a Clementine Homily: “There is an unbegotten artificer who brought the elements together, if they were separate; or, if they were together, artistically blended them so as to generate life, and perfected from all one work. For it cannot be that a work which is completely wise can be made without a mind which is greater than it.” (Ps-Clement, Hom. 6.25).
Inspirer of the Personal Good
Free and responsible personhood is history’s highest achievement and most precious value. Accordingly, a divine person must be posited as the premise of human personhood. One cannot reasonably have human personality drop out of the blue in history without hypothesizing a divine person that elicits and awakens human personality (Justin Martyr, Second Apol. 6; John of Damascus, OF 1.1; Whitehead, Religion in the Making: 154; Hartshorne, PSG: 233).
This is a sub-set of the above argument on the appearance of mind in nature, but focusing on personhood rather than mind. Since we are persons and as such experience a constant struggle for values that we regard as expressive of our personal being, then we have compelling reasons to conceive of One existing who engenders in us the desire to actualize values corresponding to our personal being.
Idealism from Plato to Hegel has viewed matter as inspirited. According to Hegel, Spirit is unfolding itself reasonably in time, and Absolute Spirit is embodying itself inexorably in history (Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind; Reason in History; Augustine, CG, 12). Accordingly, everything that happens in the material world is Spirit coming into ever-new actualizations. Every time (Zeit) is an expression of Spirit (Geist). The highest form of Spirit thus far manifested in history is human personality.
Humans are not just out there alone in an autonomous struggle for the good. It does not make any sense for existence to be enmeshed in the struggle for good without being in some sense supported by a supreme being who also is aiming for the good (for further expressions of this argument, see H. N. Wieman, The Source of Human Good; and E. S. Brightman, The Problem of God).
The Argument from the Constitution of Human Nature
This argument leads us to another variation, which, though seeming to be slight, represents a deeper turn: the very thought of God in the human mind assumes and requires that God is. Stated differently, God must exist because the idea of God is an element of human nature itself. Thus the very constitution of human nature points beyond itself to its Creator (Origen, De Princip. 1. 1.7; Tho. Aq., SCG 2.4).
This is an induction from wide observation of human experience: everywhere in the history of human consciousness there is the idea of God. Again and again it reappears as if belonging to our very minds and essential nature. It is as if God is a necessary premise of ordinary human thought and experience. Scripture also attests this view. At the Areopagus in Athens, Paul argues that God who created the world and all in it created humanity so that every culture and period of history are destined in their own way “to seek God, and, it might be, touch and find him; though indeed he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move, in him we exist; as some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring’” (Acts 17:27, 28; Chrysostom, Comm. on Acts, 38; Calvin, Inst. 1.5). The assumption that human beings cannot even be defined apart from God is integral to biblical anthropology: “On the day when God created man he made him in the likeness of God” (Gen. 5:1).
When Paul spoke of the Gentile world in Romans 1 and 2, he assumed they already had a prior elementary knowledge of God written on their hearts (Rom. 1:18): “They display the effect of the law inscribed on their hearts. Their conscience is called as a witness” (Rom. 2:15). The will deceives itself by adoring creaturely goods as greater than the Creator (Rom. 1:26, 27; Tertullian, Chaplet 6; Calvin, Inst. 1.18; 2.1). Yet repeatedly in Scripture the assumption is made that in the nature and constitution of humanity there is an awareness of One upon whom everything else depends, One to whom all creatures are finally responsible (Gen. 1:26, 27; Pss. 8, 19, 51; Rom. 1, 2; Heb. 2:6; John 1:9; Augustine, Conf. 13.10).
It is on this basis that some classic Christian teachers argue that the awareness of the existence of God is both innate and connate—that is, intrinsically existing in a person from birth (in-nasci) and coming with birth (con-nasci), and therefore belonging to the essential or original constitution of humanity (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q75; Calvin, Inst. 1.15.1–4; Gerhard, LT 1: 250; Watson, TI 1: 271).
The constitution of human nature is such that it is intrinsically capable of developing an awareness of God as ordinary human self-consciousness emerges, accompanied in due time by language, moral development, socialization, memory, reason, and will (Augustine, Conf. 10.15; Tho. Aq., SCG 1.8). “There are two teachers who have been given to us from the beginning, creation and conscience, which have taught the human race without ever uttering a word” (Chrysostom, Sermons on Hannah, 1.3). God has “implanted the knowledge of his existence in everyone by nature. The creation, its preservation and its government all proclaim the majesty of the divine nature” (John of Damascus The Orthodox Faith, 1.1),
The point: If humanity has the idea of God implanted in its very nature, then some sufficient reason must be set forth to explain why. Of many possibilities, the most evident and plausible one is that God implanted it.
Argument from the General Consent of Human Cultures
Another argument, once frequently employed, then generally ignored, but now recovering some of its credibility, hinges on the general consent of human cultures to the premise that God is (consensus gentium, the consensus of peoples). This is another corroboratory argument that, lacking the force of a fully adequate demonstration, is best used only to support and amplify other arguments, yet it cannot be cheaply dismissed without ignoring the cumulative wisdom of human history.
The argument is strengthened by making a firm disclaimer at the outset: the claim for consensus is not the same as the claim for unanimity. No major teacher of the Christian tradition has been so careless as to suggest that every single human being in fact consciously knows or believes that God exists, even though the argument is sometimes caricatured in this way. It would be foolish to say that every single human being agrees precisely on anything at all.
Rather, it is argued that belief in God is so widespread both in primitive cultures and throughout history, and atheism so theoretical, limited, and sporadic, that it is demonstrably a human consensus, despite occasional disclaimers, that God exists (Theophilus, To Autolycus; Lactantius, Div. Inst. 1.5–6). To argue the contrary—that God does not exist—is to ignore and dismiss the historical weight of human experience. If humankind at virtually all known times and places has assumed belief in a divine order that transcends human and historical disorders, then that is a fact that cannot be completely ignored by serious investigators (Justin Martyr, First Apol. 2.6; Origen, Ag. Celsus 7.32).
While the argument from consensus should not be used in isolation from other arguments, neither should it be completely set aside. Arbitrarily or capriciously to adopt a conviction contrary to that which is most widely prevailing in human history can hardly be called scientific (Clement of Alex., Stromata 5.12–14). General consent implies wide human experiencing and reflection out of many different cultural assumptions in all historical periods—far more varied cultures, for example, than have affirmed modern empirical method in the last century. Whether these reasons and experiences are valid or not must not be decided in advance by arbitrarily rejecting the more durable hypothesis in favor of merely the more recent (Justin Martyr, First Apol. 18–24).
Even when we look at societies in which brutal attempts have been made systematically to eradicate belief in God (such as the Soviet Union, and China during the period of the Cultural Revolution), the belief continues to persist, and even to show through with special poignancy and power in those very societies, precisely amid persecution (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, chap. 93; Tertullian, The Soul’s Testimony; A. Solzhenitsyn, The Cancer Ward; The Gulag Archipelago). Even at the height of Maoist power, the notion of the mandate of heaven remained firmly entrenched. Atheistic systems also have profound practical analogies to belief systems, so much so that atheistic belief itself may be argued as essentially an inverted form of theistic belief (R. Niebuhr, NDM 1. 1–5; Herberg, “The Christian Mythology of Socialism,” FEH: 180–90). Atheists indeed exist, but are on the whole exceptional, if all cultures and universal history are being surveyed (Origen, Ag. Celsus 7.37; Calvin, Inst. 1.3–5). There is no evidence whatever that their ranks are increasing. Whether they wish to or not, atheistic systems must struggle hard to make themselves plausible against this powerful historic and social consensus, which is their most frustrating obstacle.
The idea that there is general consent of humanity to the belief that God exists was widely held among early Christian teachers (Clement of Alex., Stromata 5.12–14; Theophilus, To Autolycus, ANF 2:85; Minucius Felix, Octavius, 32–33; Tertullian, The Soul’s Testimony). This fact of wide consent is usually connected with the intuited notion that the idea of God is naturally implanted or inborn or innate in human consciousness (Justin Martyr, First Apol. 2; Dialogue with Trypho, 93; Clement of Alex., Stromata 5.12; Tertullian, The Soul’s Testimony 2; Origen, Ag. Celsus 7.37; OFP 4; Lactantius, Div. Inst. 1.2.5; Augustine, Conf. 10.23).
Arguments from Change, Causality, Contingency, and Degrees of Being
Does God exist? The only answer some will consider plausible must be based upon observation of evidence gathered in the world of experience. Arguments that deliberately proceed in this way are called cosmological arguments since they are based on observed knowledge of the whole world. The four principal forms of cosmological arguments are from motion, change, contingency, and degrees of being.
Among classical exponents of these arguments is Thomas Aquinas, whose “five ways” of reasoning toward God from the world constitute the principal historical statement of the cosmological arguments. Although Thomas did not invent these arguments, he brilliantly synthesized them and organized them for future use, relying heavily upon Aristotle, Augustine, Dionysius, John of Damascus, and Maimonides. Each argument starts from a solid base in the world of experience and posits God as the source of that world as we experience it.
Any Motion Requires an Original Mover: The Argument from Change
The first of these begins with a simple, testable observation: our constant awareness of change or motion: Things are in motion. Things change. Something must have moved the motions that we see moving. Observed motion Z is moved by some motion Y, which is moved by X, which is moved by a long series of previous motions. Is it reasonable to assume that there was never any original motion that started such movement? Wherever you see a process of movement, it is more reasonable to hypothesize that movement is moved by something, for it cannot in every respect cause its own movement. Everything that changes is changed by something influencing it (Plato, Laws 10.894; Phaedrus; Aristotle, Metaphy. BWA 1, 12; David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Relig., 2–4, 9; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason). “All mutables bring us back to a first immutable” (Tho. Aq., On Truth 2).
If you wish to provide an explanation of change, you have two alternatives: either you must hypothesize (a) an infinite regression of change with no explanation of an original mover, which is an intellectual embarrassment, an offense to reason (Gregory of Nazianzus, Second Theol. Orat. 6), or (b) you must hypothesize some unchanging ground that lies prior to all the multiple changes we experience in ordinary life (Tho. Aq., Compend. Theol: 9). Christian teaching has concluded: If change exists anywhere in the world, there must be some Source of change, or some Originative Change Agent (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q2; SCG 1.44; SCG 3.66). That agent cannot be other than the same reality Christian worship celebrates and Scripture attests as God (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.13).
The Prime Mover which Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas called the unmoved Mover, or unchanging source of change, points through reason beyond reason toward the incomparable One celebrated in Christian worship as God the Creator (Tho. Aq., Compend. Theol., 3; SCG 1. 13; Comm. on Aristotle’s Physics, 8). This experiential argument is anticipated in Scripture: “Every house is built by someone, but he that built all things is God” (Heb. 3:4).
Effects Point to an Original Cause: The Argument from Causality
The next argument appears to be much like the previous one, but it is as different as cause is from change. The argument from cause begins similarly by looking at the effects and thinking backward to causes. “Efficient causes” are causes that have been effected by something other than themselves. The natural world is full of causes. The scientist’s task is to ferret them out. Each cause itself has been effected by previous causes, which themselves are rooted in prior causes, for no effect can exist without some cause. Scientific observation hungers to find a sufficient cause for every effect. One cannot, without fundamental offense to the human intellect, assert that those causes go on and on without ending and without any sufficient causal explanation.
If every event has a cause, and the universe is a system of causes and effects, it stands to reason that there must be an underived causal agent, a necessary being that underlies and enables all these causes and effects (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q2; SCG 1. 14). “If there were an infinite regress among efficient causes, no cause would be first” (Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 13). “We must, therefore, posit that there exists a first efficient cause. This is God” (SCG 1. 13).
Every discrete effect must have a reason for its occurrence. What we say of every discrete event, we must also say of the universe, of which no known part is exempt from the law of causation. If every event is caused, any reasonable person will wonder about what sort of cause would be adequate to this immense effect that we call the cosmos. The only cause conceivable to such a vast and incalculable effect must be an independent, sufficient mind and infinite will capable of conceiving and initiating the universe. Such a mind must be capable of knowing the entire universe that is shaped by it, and must have the will and power adequate to bringing such a vast outlay of causes into effect. These are precisely the qualities previously described as intrinsic to the God attested by Scripture: free, personal, eternal Spirit capable of infinite power and knowledge (Gen. 17:1; Exod. 6:3; Athanasius, Ag. Heathen, 34, 35). That infinitely capable mind is what Christian confession calls God. The infinitely powerful and knowing Mind, however, has a direct kinship and correspondence with our minds, and with the underlying intelligibility of the universe (Calvin, Inst. 1.16–18; Watson, TI 1:275). For mind has in fact appeared in the natural history of the universe (Ps. 102:26, 27; Origen, De Princip. 1. 6; Calvin, Inst. 1.13.23).
It is very difficult even to imagine the notion of any temporal event that is without cause or totally disconnected from a causal nexus. The reason it is so difficult is quite simple: Causality is an idea that is necessary to all finite thought. It is impossible to think without positing causality (Tho. Aq., Compend. Theol: 68).
Suppose that no original cause of all universal effects ever existed. Suppose nothing caused the universe. That is an even less plausible hypothesis than that an intelligent Mind created these vast complexities of matter and spirit. For if nothing caused the universe, how could it exist as an effect? How could such an assertion remain consistent with everything else we know of causality and reality?
Suppose that matter never had a beginning, but always existed. Still that requires a causal explanation. For that assertion does not exempt an evolving universe from causal inquiry as to its origin. If eternal matter, whence came the matter? How did it become so elaborately organized? Even more, how can we make sense out of the astonishing fact that mind emerged within the matter? To assert that matter can spontaneously produce mind is to assert an effect greater than the cause (W. Temple, Nature, Man and God 8).
Argument from Contingency
The third cosmological argument is drawn from the fact of contingency. A contingent act is one that depends upon something else (Calvin, Inst. 1.16.8, 9). Contingency is the opposite of necessity and is only understandable in relation to necessity. The world is full of things that are dependent on other things. These things, if they are dependent, have the character of not being necessary, in the sense that they can either be or not be. They do not exist by some absolute necessity. They come and they go. To explain the existence of a contingent being, one must refer to something else upon which it depends (Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 15). On the other hand, a necessary being would be a being that must exist. Existing would belong to that being’s very essence. The completely sufficient reason for its existence would be in itself. It would not depend upon some other being for its existence (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q2.3).
The heart of this argument is that the existence of contingent beings requires that we admit the existence of some necessary being. If any contingent being whatsoever exists, then there must be some necessary being. Contingent beings evidently exist. Therefore, the unconditionally necessary being must exist as the sufficient explanation of any contingent being (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q3.7; SCG 2.30).
The hinge point: Everything cannot be contingent. “Were this true, nothing would ever have begun, for what is does not begin to be except because of something which is, and so there would be nothing even now. This is clearly hollow. Therefore all things cannot be might-not-have-beens; among them must be a being whose existence is necessary” (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q2.3). A nonexistent contingency can only be brought into existence by something upon which it is contingent, upon something that already exists. Hence reason suggests what Scripture attests, that such a necessary being exists, which the worshiping community has called God.
Degrees of Being or Grades of Perfection
Look about you in the world, and you will see different grades in being. We frequently use the words more and less. Without such comparative terms we would be hard put to say what we often want to say. This is evidence that some perception of grades of being and goodness is built into the structure of human language, regardless of what language we speak. Some acts are less noble, some more noble. There are gradations of truth, wisdom, and perception.
Where there is a more or a less, that necessarily implies an idea of the perfection of that category of being. For how could one have a more or a less without a most? It is unreasonable to talk about a scale of gradation and leave open the maximum of that scale. If one were to hypothesize that there is nothing there at the maximal level, then the scale itself would be incomplete and deficient (Tho. Aq., SCG 2.15; ST 1 Q2.3, Q44.1). If you have degrees of justice, that indirectly points toward what is absolutely or incomparably just, that reality that is to the highest possible degree just. One who recognizes relative justice at all must posit that absolutely just being in relation to which rough modes of justice are to be measured.
This is clearly seen in common language about the good. At one point we see something with minimal good in it, another with some good in it, and another with very great good in it. If there exists any degree of goodness, then there must exist that which is good without qualification, without which there would be no way of measuring the relative degree of goodness of things. If one can conceive at all the notion of something that is less good or slightly better, then one must hypothesize that by which “better and worse” is assessed. This is a persistent assumption of moral language. One cannot posit a good and a better without a best.
Thomas Aquinas taught that we define any degree of a genus in relation to the maximum of that genus, just “as fire, which is the maximum of heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God” (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q2.3).
Similarly with being: If anything at all exists, then there must be to all beings something that most completely is. If there are degrees of being, there must be that reality that absolutely exists, without any possible diminution of being.
If there are degrees of truth, we must posit some maximum of those degrees. It is absurd to hold that there are degrees of truth but lacking any highest conceivable degree, or to avoid reference to that absolute truth in relation to which those gradients of relative truth are to be measured. Any assessment of relativity of being or goodness implies a standard in terms of which that relative being is seen as existing (Augustine, CG 19; Letters 162; John of Damascus, OF 1.9).
Arguments from Conscience, Beauty, Pragmatic Results, and Congruity
The Argument from Moral Awareness
Just as relative moral necessity cannot be required of the will except by that which is relatively good, so absolute moral necessity cannot be caused by any good less than the insurmountable good. A sense of absolute obligation can only come from One to whom absolute moral authority is fittingly and legitimately ascribed. It is to this transcendent ground of obligation that conscience witnesses. For conscience does not pretend to make the laws that it dictates (Clement of Alex., Instr. 3.1; Augustine, Answer to Letters of Petilian 2.85). The heart of the moral argument is this: The existence of absolute moral obligation establishes the existence of God as the cause of the moral order.
Conscience would not be able to bind our wills so radically and unconditionally if it were merely that we were binding ourselves. Just as order in the world suggests an intelligent orderer as its cause, so does moral awareness in human decision making suggest and require a sufficient source of moral consciousness and ground of moral authority in the universe (Augustine, On the Profit of Believing 16. 34; Kant, Crit. Pract. Reason; J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent).
The moral argument emerges out of an irrepressible internal dialogue. There are some ways in which my freedom actualizes itself that are not adequately in touch with who I really am. I tell myself, “That is not me, or not the best me.” The voice speaking is me: my conscience. There emerges a sense of serenity when I follow that conscience. I feel at one with myself. There is a sense of guilt, subjective brokenness, and self-alienation when I actualize my freedom in a way that I know is not really consistent with what I ought to be or do (Luther, Comm. on Galatians, MLS: 100–109; Calvin, Inst. 3.19.15; Wesley, WJW 5:135). The root word for conscience (conscientia or syneidēsis) implies knowledge of oneself, a knowledge one has with one’s self, a knowledge accompanying one’s own choosing and intrinsic to the process of choosing. I go about choosing; I make these choices and then I have to live with my choices.
Conscience is the knowledge I have of my own choosing. It is the way in which I compare my decisions with my truer, deeper self and with that silent measurer of my true self within myself that transcends myself (Rom. 2:15; 1 Cor. 8:7–12; 1 Tim. 1:5, 19; 4:2; Heb. 9:9; 1 Pet. 3:16; Acts 23:1). Every conscious and rational human being has that self-knowing capacity (Calvin, Inst. 3.2–3; Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphys. of Morals, LLA: 11). Most of the Western intellectual tradition, including Christian theism, has argued that everyone has some form of conscience.
The Ground of Reason’s Moral Claim
Kant sought to refute most of the arguments that we have previously discussed, but strictly on the basis of moral reasoning. In his view no empirical or speculative reasoning could be sufficient to establish reliable proofs of God’s existence. All reason could do was correct the misunderstandings of various dubious or ambiguous arguments for God’s existence (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, “On the Impossibility of the Physico-Theological Proof” Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone). Instead, Kant sought to employ what he called practical reason, a form of reason that emerges out of moral consciousness, as the sole basis for arguing the existence of God (Crit. of Prac. Reason 2.2.5).
Although Kant’s views are notoriously difficult to explain, his importance in modern theistic reasoning (especially liberal Protestant) is so great that he cannot be ignored. Though Kant viewed the cosmological arguments as wholly unsatisfactory, he thought they could be replaced by the reframing of the sort of moral argument that had long been a part of classic Christian theistic reasoning.
Eternity must ultimately right temporality’s wrongs. Conscience, moral freedom, responsibility, and law would be absurd if there were no moral law or lawgiver. Such a lawgiver every rational being has in the impingement of conscience. Any reasonable person by self-examination can come to hear and be aware of the absolutely rational claim of the categorical imperative, which is, “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature” (Kant, Fundamental Principles of Metaphy. of Morals, LLA: 38). This moral consciousness does not accrue as a matter of gathering experience in the world, but rather is something given in and with consciousness prior to data gathering. Thus the idea of God, he argued, is a necessary postulate universally and practically required by moral reflection in any reasonable person (Crit. Pract. Reason 2.2.5).
Consequently we have a modern form of argument for the existence of God that is based exclusively upon a certain kind of reasoning, namely, a priori moral reasoning. God becomes the necessary hypothesis of the moral conscience. Kant reasoned that God is needed to bring virtue and happiness into fitting conjunction, for in this world they do not correspond. Since injustice prevails in history, there must be a transhistorical way of rectifying wrongs. One cannot have a moral order without a divinely fair mind that undergirds the rights and transcends the wrongs of history. Kant’s argument is based not on revelation but, in his view, upon reason alone, and a particular type of reason—moral reasoning (Kant, Crit. Pract. Reason 2.2.1).
To overcome the obstacle of the non-correspondence of virtue and happiness in this life, Kant argued that reason must hypothesize three postulates: freedom, immortality, and God. We must have freedom if we are to sustain any idea of moral responsibility. Only if one can freely respond to a moral claim can one reasonably be addressed with, or address oneself with, a moral claim. Immortality is a necessary postulate because in this world happiness and virtue are not conjoined perfectly, so the reasonable person must hypothesize another world beyond this sphere that somehow will make right what is temporarily wrong in this world. God is a necessary hypothesis of the moral consciousness because God alone can, in some final way beyond our present experience, rightly bring into harmony the disjunctive relation of virtue and happiness (Crit. Pract. Reason 2.2.4–6). This offered an ethical justification for religion that has come to dominate some modern Protestant traditions, particularly Protestant liberalism, which may be in large part defined as a Kantian ethic melded with selected strands of Protestant theology (A. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation; A. Harnack, What Is Christianity?; W. Herrmann, Syst. Theol.).
The Necessity of a Moral Requirer
In A Grammar of Assent John Henry Newman presented the moral argument to the modern mind more subtly and with a deeper acquaintance with the varied strands of ancient Christian theism. He too began with conscience: All feel responsibility. No human consciousness can fully succeed in escaping some awareness of guilt and shame. We have an inner sense of sin or moral revulsion when we do something wrong and a sense of moral justification and serenity when we do something right. This cannot be simply explained sociologically or in terms of finite parenting. The depth, extent, and power of these moral feelings require the explanation of a moral Requirer (Newman, A Grammar of Assent: 104–15; Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil 2.3.1; W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good).
“The wicked man runs away with no one in pursuit” (Prov. 28:1). From whom is one running away? What is one afraid of? To say merely “oneself” may not fully account for the fact that this voice within oneself, conscience, points to that which is beyond oneself (Chrysostom, Homilies on the Statues 8.3). Newman did not argue that conscience is a direct or immediate revelation of God in specific detail. Yet conscience is not something we merely give to ourselves, but is God-bestowed within every self, and constitutive of the self (Newman, Grammar of Assent: 112). It is not enough to say I give it to myself. Far more pertinently, I often wish I could get rid of it. I wish it would not continue to bother me. Conscience is not self-imposed, but rather is unavoidable, as if a transcendent witness within (Newman, Grammar of Assent: 395; W. Temple, Nature, Man and God 7; Wesley, WJW 7:132, 9:218).
Such a sense of moral responsibility cannot be explained except by supposing the existence of a superior lawgiver, a Holy One who is present and impinging upon our responsibility with the claim that we do the good we know and avoid the evil we know. Some Requirer must be implied in the subtle, inward, unavoidable requirement of conscience (Origen, Ag. Celsus 1. 4). In this way the will of the Creator is posited as the necessary and sufficient reason for the existence of moral obligation. Conscience is both immanent within us and transcendent beyond us. For this is the way God expresses the divine claim, at least indirectly, in the form of potential guilt, hiddenly meeting each one at the closest possible quarters—the inner precincts of each individual person’s moral self-awareness (Newman, Grammar of Assent: 121; Kierkegaard, Works of Love: 136).
Evil, Conscience, and God
Moral awareness is painfully conscious that it exists in relation to that which transcends it. It desires and longs for communion and reconciliation with the One who gives moral order. It knows that it cannot be sufficiently explained in terms of environmental influences or education, although conscience is subject to further education and refinement. Rather conscience is an element essential to human consciousness, which preconditions education and socialization (Lactantius, Div. Inst. 6.8–10; Ambrose, Duties 1. 8–14; Luther, Comm. on Galatians, MLS: 118–21).
Nor can the presence of evil fundamentally undermine the moral argument, as if to say, “God could not exist in a world as bad as the one to which conscience attests.” Rather, theistic exponents of the moral argument view the painful awareness of persistent evil as a powerful validation rather than a rejection of the argument, implying that “God does exist, because we are awakened to the persistence of evil through conscience in a way that points beyond the law to the lawgiver and leads to repentance, redemption, and reconciliation.” (Augustine, Enchiridion, LCC 7: 353).
In classical Christian teaching, no evil to which conscience attests is so far distanced from the divine will that it cannot become subsequently a greater good. God permits evil to emerge out of freedom in the interest of the greater good of enhancing self-determination and personhood, and with the longer-range intent and hope of discipline and correction—all of which tends ultimately toward a more complete actualization of the divine good purpose (Calvin, Inst. 3.19.7).
The Argument from Beauty
Beauty gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit. So universal is the capacity for beauty that this capacity is regarded as a normal faculty of human existence. The absence of any sense of beauty would be regarded as abnormal and a diminution of human dignity (Pss. 50:2; 96:6; Isa. 52:7; Methodius, Orat. on the Psalms). Beauty is that by reason of which we behold creaturely things as objects of admiration or ingenious inspiration or disinterested satisfaction. Something beautiful is intrinsically pleasing, and capable of pleasing most anyone who looks at it (Tho. Aq., ST 1–2 Q34.2; Kant, Critique of Judgment).
Beauty cannot be reduced to utility, for often we admire things whose usefulness cannot be established unless one appeals back to the primary value of beauty itself. Augustine sharply distinguished between those things to be used and those to be enjoyed. “To enjoy something is to cling to it with love for its own sake. To use something, however, is to employ it in obtaining that which you love, provided that it is worthy of love.” (On Chr. Doctrine 1. 4). We may try to make “use” of God, as if God were a thing. Things are to be used, but God is to be enjoyed. “No one rightly uses God, for he is to be enjoyed. The last end is not a utility” (Tho. Aq., ST 1–2 Q16.3).
Beauty cannot be reduced to a purely inward feeling. For beauty to some degree can be shared, leading beholders to the conviction that there is something objective about beauty, that it is admirable in itself, as a sunrise would not be made less beautiful if no one were there to behold it (Clement of Alex., Instr. 3.1; Francis Hutcheson, Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue; Edmund Burke, The Sublime and the Beautiful).
The aesthetic argument for the existence of God is the unadorned observation that if beauty exists at all in this extraordinary universe, then it must be accounted for by some sufficient cause. In view of the abundance and power of the forms of beauty in this world, no cause is sufficient short of positing a Creator who cares about creation enough to make it beautiful and recognizable as such. Where beauty is found, one must hypothesize a ground and giver of the beautiful, a source of beauty that transcends naturalistic accounts of its origin (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q5).
Scripture celebrates the relation between the beauty of creation and the Creator: “The heavens tell out the glory of God, the vault of heaven reveals his handiwork. One day speaks to another, night with night shares its knowledge, and this without speech or language or sound of any voice. Their music goes out through all the earth, their words reach to the end of the world” (Ps. 19:1–4; Eusebius, Commentary on Psalms 18.5). John of Damascus commented: “The heavens show forth the glory of God’ not by speaking in voice audible to sensible ears, but by manifesting to us through their own greatness the power of the Creator, and when we remark their beauty, we give glory to their Maker as the best of all artificers” (John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith 2.6). “The world itself, by its well-ordered changes and movements, and by the fair appearance of all visible things, bears a testimony of its own, both that it has been created, and also that it could not have been created save by God, whose greatness and beauty are unutterable and invisible” (Augustine, CG 11.4). The faithful are called to beautify the house of the Lord (Ezra 7:27; Isa. 60:13) as a fitting response to the beauty of the Lord (Ps. 27:4; Song of Songs, 6:4).
If degrees of beauty exist, as our common language constantly assumes, then that which is unsurpassably beautiful, or filled with the glory of beauty, must be posited, and that we call God. It is in this sense that the psalmist sought all the days of his life to “behold the beauty of the Lord” (Ps. 27:4) and to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (Ps. 96:9), for “strength and beauty are in his sanctuary” (Ps. 96:6). “Things are beautiful,” noted Thomas, “by the indwelling of God” (Tho. Aq., Expos. of Psalms 25.5).
Macrina taught that the soul that recognizes its own beauty rightly sees that beauty as a reflection of God’s own beauty: “The Deity is in very substance Beautiful; and to the Deity the soul will in its state of purity have affinity” and will embrace God as like the beauty of the soul herself. Hence “the soul copies the life that is above,” and “the Beautiful is necessarily lovable to those who recognize it.” Although this recognition is expected finally in the resurrection, Gregory thought, it may be anticipatively experienced in the soul’s ascent to God here and now. When this happens “enjoyment takes the place of desire, and the power to enjoy renders desire useless and out of date.” Then the soul will “know herself accurately, what her actual nature is, and should behold the Original Beauty reflected in the mirror” (Sister Macrina, in On the Soul and The Resurrection, NPNF 2 5:449).
The Pragmatic Argument
The modern form of the pragmatic argument for the existence of God was famously stated by psychologist William James, who came to the down-to-earth conclusion that the reality of God is practically validated by the fact that believing in God makes people function better and feel better and live more productive lives. If one acts on the assumption that God exists, life works better. Those who believe in God are going to be better able to take risks, and will have better emotional health, because they trust that some intelligible power grounds both the universe and their own behavior. The premise that God exists is both psychologically healthier and sociologically more productive than its opposite. This is an argument from results, and therefore pragmatic (W. James, Essays on Faith and Morals: 115, 212, 256; C. S. Pierce, Collected Papers, 6.467).
The argument is quintessentially modern, in that it is psychological at its center, metaphysically skeptical, and avoids dealing with the truth question—attending only to results. Yet its spirit is to some degree anticipated by numerous Christian writers who have appealed to “doing” the truth as a basis for understanding it (notably Baxter, Wesley, Phoebe Palmer, and Kierkegaard), stressing the importance of praxis in the knowing of God’s greatness and goodness (especially John Cassian, Ignatius Loyola, and Teresa of Avila).
Causal Law Prior to Thought
Another more subtle argument hinges on the self-evident insight that causal law exists before its discovery. The context for this argument is the scientific world where we sometimes hear the spurious assertion that the more science advances, the further the study of God must retreat. If that should be true then there would be an irreversible decline of the study of God as scientific inquiry proceeds. In this view, belief in God has been temporarily used to explain phenomena that are not as yet accounted for by scientific or causal law; as soon as scientific inquiry extends the network of causality to cover all phenomena of nature, then belief in God will have been whittled away (Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity; Marx, Humanitarianism and Liberalism; Nietzsche, The Will to Power). The following argument challenges that assumption.
The question is raised: “What are causal laws?” They are formulas that are defended by scientific inquiry. They are stated by people who are seeking to discover the way insects feed, the way the physical universe works, the structure of the atom. But all these causal laws were true and in operation before they were discovered. What existence did these causal laws have before they were formulated by us? They existed as adequately as now, but without recognition by us (Augustine, Of True Religion 21). The ideas are prior to our discovery (Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will LLA, 2.9, On the Trin. 14.21; Sir James Jeans, Physics and Philosophy; E. S. Brightman, Moral Laws; L. H. DeWolfe, Theol. of Living Church).
If laws of causality exist before they are formulated by human minds, then one must posit either a divine Mind or chance. That these laws of causality have occurred by chance or random events is far less plausible than that they correspond to a Mind that underlies all things. Such a Mind corresponds with what the worshiping community calls God (Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will 2.6). Mathematical studies of the probability of chance causing the emergence of life in the universe indicate that those chances are so low as to be virtually inconceivable.
The Argument from Congruity: Comprehensive Complementarity
One of the most compelling theistic arguments cannot be stated until all the above arguments have been set forth. It is the argument from congruity or comprehensive complementarity. It does not depend upon any single one of the arguments just described, but builds upon the accumulation of all of them.
The center of this argument is: that reason which best explains the most distantly related facts is more probably true. It is a probability hypothesis. Any postulate that gathers together a great number of disparate facts and accounts for them intelligibly and integrally is more likely true than one that accounts for fewer facts. It is argued that the hypothesis of the existence of God provides the most congruent available basis for explaining ideas otherwise regarded as absurdities. It offers purposeful integration to otherwise disparate facts of our mental, spiritual, and physical existence.
If God in fact exists, then the virtually universal belief in divine reality is vindicated. If God exists, then the intellectual hunger to ask for a first cause of causes is satisfied without the embarrassment of an infinite regress of causes or unaccounted-for motions. If God exists, then our inveterate religious nature has an object. If God exists, then the uniformity of natural law finds adequate explanation. If God exists, then human moral awareness is relieved of the charge of being an immense absurdity. There is a kind of cumulative effect from the various arguments in which one hypothesis—that God exists—solves recalcitrant problems that are far harder to solve without it (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q3; W. James, Essays on Faith and Morals; E. L. Long, A Survey of Christian Ethics: 310–14 for clarification of the concept of “comprehensive complementarity”).
Argument from the Idea of Perfect Being
The Idea of Perfect Being Requires Its Existence
The last argument for the existence of God is the simplest, yet hardest to grasp quickly, and impossible without meditation. In my view it is the most important argument for the existence of God, and the most beautiful. After the argument has been stated, unless it is studied carefully, the casual reader is unlikely to be even slightly impressed by it. It is so simple that its profundity escapes our notice. I have been through this argument so many times with so little effect on so many audiences that I do not expect the beholder joyfully to leap to receive it immediately, partly because of its intrinsic simplicity. But because of its exceeding weight, I will set it forth as clearly as possible. It is called the ontological argument because it hinges entirely upon rightly conceiving of God’s being (Gr: ontos, being). It offers a form of reasoning that requires quiet meditation in order that in due time it may grasp one’s soul. So: breathe deeply; quietly consider:
The ontological argument finds in the very idea of God the proof of God’s existence. If that does not strike you as meaningful, let me express it differently: If properly thought, the very idea of God requires that the referent of that idea, God, exists. God is the only idea that refers to a reality that must exist if properly conceived.
Once more: We have an idea of an absolutely perfect being. It is possible to have that idea. The heart of this argument: Existence is a necessary characteristic of that particular idea, the idea of perfect being. For the idea of perfection would not be perfect if that to which it refers did not exist. An absolutely perfect being must exist if it is to be absolutely perfect. The fact or truth or actual reality to which that idea refers must exist, otherwise that idea is not a perfect idea.
That is it. If it went by too fast, I will take it step-by-step in its classic formulation.
That Than Which Nothing Greater Can Be Conceived Must Exist
Anselm’s formulation has hardly been improved upon in eight hundred years. Anselm was asking in the Proslogion whether it is possible to reach the notion of the existence of God through reasoning, although he himself acknowledged the living presence of God through faith. Anselm defined God in a particular way: God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived (Anselm, Proslog. 2). Anyone who is going to speak with another about this argument does well to learn the phrase “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”—try it three times out loud if all else fails. Augustine had anticipated Anselm’s definition in arguing that the thought of God “takes the form of an endeavor to reach the conception of a nature than which nothing more excellent or more exalted exists” (On Chr. Doctrine 1.6).
According to Anselm, there is no difficulty in conceiving of the idea of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” The phrase means that we are speaking of perfect being, that being who is greater (in goodness, being, and power) than any other being we can conceive. Yet there are two possible ways of thinking that idea:
That Than Which Nothing Greater Can Be Conceived as: | |||
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Either A |
or B | ||
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Idea in Mind Only |
Idea as Existing | ||
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The idea refers to that which exists in our minds, but not in reality itself. |
The idea refers to that which exists in reality, and not in our minds only. | ||
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Meditate on these two ideas |
Then ask: Which idea is greater? | ||
Ask yourself, Which idea is greater: an idea of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” but that exists in our minds only and not in reality, or, the second idea, an idea of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” that exists in reality and not just in the understanding alone?
If you say the second idea is greater, you have made an important decision, and have accepted the ontological argument. For if so, you attribute existence to that idea. You have decided that if that idea (B) exists in reality, it is greater than that idea (A) that exists only conceptually, in our minds. The lesser is lacking in only one way: its referent does not exist.
That is the crux of the argument. Most people answer with Anselm that such an idea—if in our minds only—cannot be “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” because its referent does not exist in reality. It lacks something, making it something less than “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” So the referent of the second idea must exist if that idea is to be the greater. If the second is the greater idea, as Anselm thought it must be, then the referent of that idea (real being) is implied in the idea itself.
Thus God’s existence is implied in the very idea of God, properly conceived. It is necessary that God exist, because the very idea of God, properly conceived, requires God’s existence. For if you opt for the first idea (conceiving of God merely as an idea in our minds, without existing), then Anselm thought that you still have not arrived at the proper conception of that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Since the first idea is a foolish idea of God, it invites fools to say, “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1), which is the biblical text for Anselm’s Proslogium (Proslog. 2).
In his second, somewhat refined, statement of the argument, Anselm further argued that God “cannot be conceived not to exist. For, it is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist. Hence, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not that, than which nothing greater can be conceived” (Anselm, Proslog. 3). “Therefore, he who understands that God so exists, cannot conceive that he does not exist” (Proslog. 4). Considered hurriedly, Anselm’s argument appears to be nonsensical, repetitious, and almost laughable.
Gaunilo, a monk of Marmoutiers, thought so. He countered that the idea of a perfect being does not imply its existence, for we can easily form the idea of purely imaginary beings, he said, but that does not bring them into being. We can imagine an island, or money in our pockets, but that does not mean they exist (Gaunilo, A Reply on Behalf of the Fool). Gaunilo’s argument has been taken to be a standard, and I think inaccurate, refutation of the ontological argument.
Anselm’s response to Gaunilo was far more profound: An island and money in my pocket are finite things. This argument does not apply to anything that is finite. The reason is that “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is not and cannot be finite, since the infinite can be conceived to be greater than the finite. The only object to which this argument can be applied is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived, when conceived as existing in reality and not in our mind only.” Gaunilo’s objection is valid with respect to any imperfect, finite being, because in its case actual existence is not necessary to the content of the idea. But it is a flawed argument in relation to the idea of perfect being. For in this case the actual existence of the being conceived must be included in the necessary content of the idea (Anselm, Reply to Gaunilo, BW: 153; Proslog., A Reply to the Foregoing by the Author of the Book in Question).
The more subtle (Kantian) objection to the argument is that existence is not an attribute or predicate. An idea is an idea whether it is thought to be in our heads or in reality, Kant argued. For example, if God did not exist in reality, that would not change our idea of him existing in reality (Critique of Pure Reason 2.3.4). But Kant’s appraisal is still left with the embarrassing conclusion that having existence is no greater than not having existence.
The idea of a perfect being, Descartes thought, must have come from such a being whose actual existence is a necessary assumption of that being’s perfection. (For additional statements of the ontological argument, see Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding 4, 10; Monadology 44, 45; Spinoza, Ethics 1.7–11; W. Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae 3.1; Charles Hartshorne, Man’s Vision of God 10; for objections, see Tho. Aq. ST 1 Q2.1; Locke, Essays Concerning Human Understanding 4.10; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason: 379; Edwards, Freedom of Will, 2.3; G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Phil. of Relig. 3:62–67, 347).
This is in one way merely an argument, yet an argument that has penetrating power when understood. The seminal idea of the argument is found in a much earlier remark by Augustine: “God is more truly thought than He is described, and exists more truly than He is thought” (On Trin. 7.4; 8.3).
Even more explicitly was the argument anticipated by Hilary, in a profound reflection written during his exile in Phyrgia (356–359), commenting on the divine name, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exod. 2:14): “For no property of God which the mind can grasp is more characteristic than existence, since existence, in the absolute sense, cannot be predicated of that which shall come to an end, or of that which has had a beginning, and He who now joins continuity of being with the possession of perfect felicity could not in the past, nor can in the future, be non-existent; for whatsoever is Divine can neither be originated nor destroyed. Therefore, since God’s eternity is inseparable from Himself, it was worthy of Him to reveal this one thing, that He is, as the assurance of His absolute eternity” (Hilary, Trin. 1. 5). Hence with remarkable prescience, long before Anselm, Hilary had pointedly concluded (a) that existence is intrinsic to the idea of God; (b) that since those things that exist normally have a beginning and end, the notion of existence is not adequate to indicate fully the eternal way in which God is; (c) that God cannot be thought not to exist; and (d) that the eternal way in which God exists is revealed by God already in the disclosure of God’s name, “I AM WHO I AM.”
Does God minus the world equal God? If one answers yes, then it must be conceded that the very idea of God is greater than the idea of the world or anything in or of the world. If that idea of such a greater-than-world being is rightly conceived, it cannot fail to have included or assumed in its definition that it exists in reality and not in our minds only. For what is greater than the world could not exist merely as an idea in our minds. The obvious evidence is that the world exists.
After many years of teaching the ontological argument in systematic theology classes, I still can seldom state it without being profoundly moved by it. I have stated it above in about a dozen ways. Those who have not “gotten it” yet might try re-reading the above several times.
Most of the arguments of this chapter have been inductive arguments from experience. But this last argument is essentially deductive and analytical in relation to a particular idea, that of perfect being. This argument is called a priori, i.e., prior to experience, because it is discoverable through rational reflection alone without the help of sensory input. Here we are relying exclusively upon a rational analysis of ideas, not the support of facts or the data of experience. Carelessly stated, the ontological argument seems simply to beg the question by making sure that one’s conclusions are already embedded in the premises. Yet when properly formulated, it is hard to counter. That Thomas (ST 1 Q2.1; SCG 1. 10, 11) and Kant (Critique of Pure Reason, 2.3.4) rejected it without fully understanding it is regrettable. That Hegel (Phenomenology of Mind), Leibniz (New Essays Concerning Human Understanding 4.10), and Hartshorne (Anselm’s Discovery and The Divine Perfections) have affirmed and elaborated it is to their credit.
We began this chapter with the question of whether the previously described idea of God is indeed true—whether this God exists. Not only reason, but Scripture, tradition, and experience have assisted in answering the question insofar as it is answerable. We have necessarily relied on rational argumentation and natural theology more here than in any other part of this book, since the question is intrinsically apologetic: Upon what reasonable grounds can God be said to exist, or even be rightly conceived not to exist?
Although the results of such an inquiry will always seem inadequate to some and remain always open to further refinement, they are not meaningless. We come away from these arguments with a cumulative pattern of reasoning that in its totality is sufficient to support the claim that God exists, and exists in the way that Christian teaching has said God exists.
In summary: If purpose exists there must be a Purposer, if order, an Orderer. If we see design in the world, we must hypothesize a Designer of sufficient intelligence to produce an intelligible world. If mind exists in evolving history, some incomparable Mind must have enabled and created the possibility of our minds. If it is so difficult to be a human being without knowing something of God, then there must be a sufficient reason for this awareness being so persistent in human cultures and societies, even when suppressed. If such wide consent exists in history to the existence of God, that fact must be accounted for with a sufficient reason. If the idea of God is intrinsic to human consciousness, then God must exist. From the fact of change we must hypothesize a change agent. If anything moves, something must have first moved everything. There must be a being that causes all causes and that moves all movement. If contingent beings exist, there must be a necessary being. If we experience through conscience a sense of absolute moral obligation as relentlessly as we do, even against parents, against society, against superego constraints, then we must hypothesize a ground of moral obligation calling us to the highest good and possessed of weightiest moral authority. In addition to all this, the very idea of perfect being requires the existence of perfect being, otherwise that idea is less than the idea of perfect being.
From this we conclude that God, to whose existence these arguments point, exists more fully than we who are reasoning and arguing exist (Augustine, Conf. 7.10) and that there is nothing so proper to God as to be (Hilary, Trin. 1. 5). We have ample grounds upon which to say: God exists. Reason confirms that to which Scripture attests, that God incomparably is.