In the 2000s, there were a series of bestselling books about atheism published, leveled against Christianity, and particularly Catholicism. The central argument of these books: it is impossible for God to exist. But the god these books propped up was not the “Lord of lords and King of kings” whom Christians, Jews, or Muslims believe in (Rev 17:14). The books pictured God as a superbeing, effectively a hyper powerful version of the Greek or Roman gods. If the books’ description of God is accurate, then Christians are buffoons and fools for believing in such nonsense in the modern age. But God is not a superbeing or a very powerful version of the pagan gods. Rather, He is Being Itself, Existence Itself. As R. Buckminster Fuller said, “God is a verb, not a noun.” The Lord “Ises,” while we are.
To say that God is a being in creation, no matter how powerful he may be, is inaccurate. Indeed, no matter how powerful that god was, if he were a being among other beings, he would be inside time and creation. In that case, one could disprove the existence of God through scientific means. But God is not like the gods. He is not a being in time or creation, but exists separately and independently from them. This is not to say that God leaves His creation be, as a Deist (God set the universe in motion like a clockworker and has since left it to its own devices) approach to understanding God would claim. No, He continues to work in creation at every moment, as we will address later.
Biology studies physical life, chemistry studies molecules, and physics studies matter and the universe. We can use reason to deduce whether or not God exists, but we need to employ philosophy, because philosophy’s subject matter is all that pertains to wisdom. Knowledge of whether or not God exists certainly pertains to wisdom.
The most famous proofs for God’s existence are St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Five Ways”: 1.) The argument from Motion, 2.) The argument from Efficient Cause, 3.) The argument from possibility and necessity, 4.) The argument from Gradation, 5.) The argument from design. We will not address all these arguments in depth, but, seeing that they have been frequently misrepresented in our day and age, we will give brief summaries of each.
1.) The argument from motion states that since everything in motion was put in motion by some other motion, there must have been a first motion, and hence a first Mover, who set everything in motion. We call this First Mover God.
2.) Everything is an effect of some cause. But there must have been a first, or uncaused cause, which directly and indirectly caused everything else. This First Cause we call God.
3.) Everything that exists does not need to exist, but something must necessarily exist. This Necessary Existence we call God.
4.) Everything is good in a gradation, in proportion to something else. But something must be all-good, the goodness against which all other goodness is measured. This All-Goodness we call God.
5.) Everything moves toward an end, even that which lacks intelligence, or even life, such as a rock. The rock may have begun as a boulder, but is eventually whittled down to mere atoms. Therefore, there must exist something directing the movement of all things, even inanimate things, to their end. This Governing Force, directing all things, we call God.
In fact, pagan philosophers also proved the existence of a sole God, who is completely “other” than any created thing in the universe. Writing about four centuries before Christ, Socrates formulated the Teleological Argument for God’s existence, whose premise is that whatever exists for a purpose must be the work of an outside intelligence. About a century after him, Aristotle said that God is the source of all motion and all change in creation, and that God must exist by His very essence, which is “to be” (ST I, 4.2). In light of St. Thomas’ proofs and the pagan philosophers, then, we can prove God’s existence as the Unmoved Mover or the Uncaused Cause by our reason alone.
Because the modern atheist movement often tries to refute an incomplete argument, critics can unsurprisingly easily disprove these distorted forms of the arguments, but they are fighting against their own wrong conception of reality.
The majority of these arguments are distorted because they portray God as a mere being in creation. Again, if the prevailing conception of God in modern society is who he really is, then none of us can believe in him without having severe mental problems, or by lying. These authors’ conception of God assumes a god who created everything that exists, and yet is a product of that creation – an illogical notion of God. God cannot be a product of creation, or else He would not be God!
We cannot comprehend God in the same way that we can creatures, because the Lord is infinite and creation is finite. Our perception of reality is limited to time and creation. By our nature, we simply cannot understand anything else. We can only comprehend “complex,” or “composed,” things. Similarly, we can only define God by similitude, or by comparing Him to other realities we can comprehend.
God is totally simple – the attribute we call Divine Simplicity. This simplicity does not correspond to our common understanding of the word “simple.” God is not “dumb” or “easy.” We can best understand Divine Simplicity by contrasting it with our composition. We are composites because we are composed of many specific parts. We are even specific individuals within a specific species. But God is not a species. He alone is God. Neither does anything have any attributes of God, except by gradation. A saint is a charitable person, but he or she is not Love Itself. Aristotle was a wise man, but He was not Wisdom Itself. But God does not so much possess love or wisdom as He is Love and He is Wisdom. Therefore, we say that God is simple because He is wholly whole.
If we say “the Blessed Virgin Mary possesses immense love,” we do not mean that she possesses a large portion of “Love,” as though she had the largest piece of the pie. Because “God is Love,” Love is not something quantifiable, because God is infinite (1 Jn 4:8). Therefore, when we say that the Blessed Virgin possesses immense love, we are saying that she participates to a high degree in the Divine Love of God; she has a tremendous capacity for Love, for God. God’s infinity implies His simplicity, for that which is infinite cannot be composed, or defined in any absolute way. In fact, as St. Thomas says, the only way we can conceive of God or define Him in any way is by similitude – by speaking in terms of what we can perceive with our senses, because we cannot comprehend infinity.
Because God is simple, He is perfect, for He is complete. The Latin perfectus, means “complete,” or “lacking in nothing.” God lacks nothing because He is Existence Itself; and since Existence is infinite, so God’s completion is infinite.
So, we say that God’s essence is His existence. His very being is “to be.” An essence is the nature of something that exists. We are human beings and our essence is our nature, that which animates us to be who we are. But a nature is not a person, and therefore we are not our essence. But, God’s essence is His existence because His existence depends on nothing.
While God is Existence Itself, He is also Love Itself. All love flows from Him. “He who does not love does not know God; for God is Love” (1 Jn 4:8). God is our final end, so He must be love, for “faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13).
While popular culture often paints love as a feeling or a set of good feelings, love is neither of these. It is an act of the will. Love is the act of willing the good of the other without expecting something in return (ST IIi, 26.1). God does not feel as we do, for He is perfect and thus never diminishes or increases. He instead wills that everything orient itself toward Him as its final end. The only way things cannot orient toward Him is if they choose not to do so, which only beings with a rational soul can do (e.g. those who have free will (which we will discuss later)).
All goodness resides in God, for all goodness flows from Him. Therefore, to love is to will that the beloved become closer to God. For example, if one gives some food to a hungry person, he performs an act of love for him or her firstly by giving goods that will make the recipient more physically healthy. Additionally, the giver performs an act of love for God by imitating Christ’s gift to humanity of His whole self on the cross. With this understanding of love, then, every act which tends toward the good, that is, ultimately, to God, is a loving act.
Any act that leads away from God is an evil, a hateful act. But, evil is secondary to good in the sense that evil relies on the good for its existence, because evil is not so much something in itself as it is a privation of something, namely the good (Enchiridion, St. Augustine). The good came first and evil after. In metaphysical terms, good does not need evil, but evil needs the good.
Therefore, since evil is secondary to good, the acts that pertain to evil are secondary to those that pertain to the good. Consequently, hate is secondary to love. Therefore, God, the First Cause and the Final End of everything, is Love. He needs no evil, but his creatures introduced evil into the world by their free choice.