Arguments for the Existence of God This reading is composed of three parts. The first is an account of the properties traditionally associated with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic conception of God. The second and third are arguments for the existence of God from the medieval philosophers, St. Anselm of Canterbury and St. Thomas Aquinas. Part I: The Essence of God The following is an excerpt from a philosophy text book titled Philosophical Issues: A Brief Introduction, by Daniel Birsch, published in 2003 by McGraw–Hill. What is God? Natural theology tries to understand God through the use of reason. For mainstream Christians, however, natural theology rarely works alone, but usually in connection with revealed theology. In revealed theology, people gain knowledge of God through revelation from God. In Christianity, the largest source of revelation is the Bible. Religious thinkers use reason to examine the ideas about God that have been revealed. Thus, the philosopher or theologian uses natural theology to examine the ideas presented in revealed theology. By about 1,000 years after Christ, the Christian theologians had developed an idea of God as an infinite, omnipotent, transcendent, omnipresent, omniscient, self-existent, eternal, personal, perfectly good, loving, spiritual, creator with thoughts, plans, emotions, and supreme intelligence. To say that God is infinite, is to say that he has no limits. This means no limits in any sense, temporal, spatial, physical, and so on. It is, of course, difficult if not impossible for finite beings to understand an infinite being. Natural theology has made some progress in this direction, however, and four characteristics related to God’s being infinite will be discussed briefly. One area related to God’s being infinite or without limits is his being all- powerful or omnipotent. According to the Christian thinker Thomas Aquinas, this claim implies that God can do anything that does not involve a contradiction in terms. For example, God cannot create a four-sided triangle because that would involve a contradiction in terms. Most theologians believe, however, that the physical laws of the universe do not bind God. For example, God can reanimate the dead, something that would seem to defy physical laws. Presumably he could also make light travel faster than 186,000 miles per second. Our physical laws would suggest that it would be impossible for light to travel at any other speed than this, but God can create new physical laws. If this is the case, we should not hope to completely understand him. Human beings could have no conception about how new physical laws could be created. The claim that God is all-powerful is a mysterious claim that we cannot really understand. We may think we understand this claim, but it is a difficult notion and has led to many problems. Another of the traditional attributes of God related to his being infinite or unlimited is that he is transcendent, or beyond the physical universe that humans experience. God is not part of the universe since he created it and is not dependent upon it. For some thinkers, God’s transcendence applies not only to space but also to time. God is outside time as well as being outside space. As well as being transcendent, God is also omnipresent, not limited to a particular spatial location, but everywhere at once. Whatever there is and wherever it is located, God is there. This might also be applied to time. In some sense, God is present in all times. We are physical beings with a definite physical and temporal location. It is, of course, difficult for us to really understand how a being could be everywhere at once. 1 One final attribute connected to God’s being infinite is that he is omniscient or all-knowing. God knows everything that it is possible to know. He knows everything that has ever happened anywhere and everything that is happening now. Some thinkers also believe that he knows everything that will happen in the future. God’s omniscience is another one of the mysteries of God. How can a being know everything, especially everything that will happen in the future? Once again it seems difficult for us to really understand this. One property that is not connected with being infinite is the idea that God is self-existent, which means that God is not dependent for his existence or characteristics on anything other than himself. No other being caused God to exist or could cause him to cease existing. He just is. When we claim that God is self-existent, we also mean that his substance is wholly his. The last part of this claim, that his substance is wholly his, means that God is not made of some other stuff, such as energy, matter, atoms, quarks, or strings. He is simply God. Another characteristic that is independent of his infinite nature is that God is eternal, that is, without a beginning or an ending. God exists now, and has always existed and always will exist. Many theologians have taken this to mean that God is outside all time. What exactly it means to be “outside time” is a difficult matter. We are temporal beings and it is difficult for us to understand a non-temporal being. The next attribute is that God is a personal being, one with whom it is possible to have a relationship. Christianity has made it clear that God is a “he” with a relation to human beings, rather than an “it” with no connection to people. In the Bible, God uses the personal term “father” to describe himself on many occasions. Jesus also uses the image of fatherhood as the most appropriate way to conceive of God. This use of the terms “he” and “father” has created problems for many believers, since it implies to some people that God has a gender. In the Old Testament, we see God having a personal relationship with human beings, such as Abraham. Christians believe that God can be addressed with prayer and that in one way or another God responds to the prayers of human beings. The claim that God is a personal being implies that it is possible to have a relationship or encounter with God. Christians also claim that God is perfectly good or the ultimately moral being. This is a difficult claim, which has produced a great deal of discussion about how to understand it. Does it mean that God is good in relation to some moral standard that is external to him? This would imply that on some presumably objective scale of good and evil, God is as high on the scale as it is possible to go. No being could be better than God, or higher on the scale. It also might mean that God himself is the standard of goodness. He is perfectly good because it is his nature to be perfect good-ness. Either approach produces philosophical problems connected to understanding exactly what is meant by the claim. Related to God’s perfect goodness is the idea that Christians consider God to be a loving being. God’s love for his creatures is unconditional and universal in extent. It is extended to human beings, not because they deserve it but because of the grace of God. Many Christians claim that God’s love springs from his nature, not from a person’s worthiness, and is directed toward the person’s welfare and fulfillment. God is also a spiritual being or a being whose substance is not material substance. In other words, he is spirit, whatever that is, and not matter or energy. We are material beings and cannot really understand what it would mean to be a spiritual being. This is similar to the problem we saw earlier with the nature of the soul. We did not really understand the nature of a spiritual soul, and we also cannot really understand the nature of a spiritual God. This attribute is an essential part of the mysterious nature of God. Finally in the Christian tradition, God is the creator of everything that exists other than himself. He created everything that exists out of nothing. In other words, he brought the universe into existence when there was only himself. This entails a 2 distinction between God and his creation. He is logically distinct from his creation and the creatures that he created. It also implies that the created realm is dependent upon God as its creator and the source of its continued existence. All creatures including human beings exist, not through some natural right, but by the grace of God. The Christian conception of God has been developing over the past 2,000 years. It is the product of both revealed theology and natural theology. Christians see God as the divine creator of the universe, a being perfect in every conceivable way. Part II: St. Anselm and the Ontological Argument St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) was an Italian Benedictine monk, a medieval philosopher and a church official who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. His personal motto was “faith seeking understanding.” Considered the founder of scholasticism, he is known as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God. The following is an excerpt from his book, Proslogion, in which he presents his famous argument. (Translated by Johnathan Barnes.) Therefore, Lord, you who grant understanding to faith, in so far as you know it to be beneficial, grant to me the ability to understand that you are as we believe, and that you are that which we believe.