II
PROOFS FOR GOD’S EXISTENCE
Despite the constant teaching of the Catholic Church, many Catholics are surprised to learn that it is reasonable and also a matter of divine revelation that the human mind can arrive at a clear and unshakable conviction of the existence of one God as creator of the universe. Many non-Catholics insist that the question of God’s existence is strictly a personal matter, and one of faith, not reason. Usually what is meant by “strictly a personal matter” is HANDS OFF! It is a religious question, and of concern only to me! This attitude, however, is not only an insult to God, but also to human reason. Man has an intellect by which he can discover truth, all truth, and even the cause of all truth. By his intellect man knows very few things intuitively and easily; his normal path is one of arduous learning, reasoning, discovering, and problem-solving. This winding path by which he comes to see why things are so and not otherwise than they are, is called “proof” or “evidence.” On the basis of the proof or evidence the human mind can readily see the truth or falsity of the claim. “Proof” is always our reason for making the claim; that is, the “proof” contains the cause of the conclusion we have just drawn. As long as the area of investigation is co-natural to man, i.e.., within the ambit of his experience, the “evidence” or “proof” he digs up will very often coincide with the real cause in nature which brought the situation about. That is to say, in all the natural sciences (involving sensible bodies and activities), in the numerous branches of mathematics (involving imagination and consistency), as well as in most human affairs (dealing with right and wrong, responsibility, guilty or not guilty), we can very often amass our evidence from the very causes that produced the situation in question. In that case, the cause of our knowing a truth conclusively coincides with the causes that brought the real situation about. But when, on the other hand, our investigation carries us beyond the realm of human experience, then the only evidence we have is the effects we have in front of us. That is to say, when we raise such basic questions as the efficient designer and creator of our whole being and the totality of the universe, or ask why we ourselves are on this earth, we are asking about causes that transcend all our experience and imagination. But we do have the evidence in front of us all the time that there must exist some cause because of the nature of the effects we behold. That is, the totality of the evidence within ourselves and around ourselves is contained in the effects. Human footprints in the sand indicate that a man has walked this way before, the evidence is the footprint, an effect. That there is a creative God is the most important truth the human mind can reach, because it makes all the difference in our response, our daily lives, our total attitude. To deny human reason the possibility of proving with certitude that there is a First Cause of all within range of human experience is to deny our intelligence.
Modem academicians and politicians are all too ready to leave God out of the picture. Rather than say, “He does not exist,” as atheists, Marxists, and materialists do say, they would prefer to be skeptical, agnostic, or say it is a matter of religion, not of reason and debate. Because of the prevailing agnosticism, or better, indifference, toward the real existence of a creating God, who is the total efficient, exemplar, and final cause of every single reality outside himself, the First Vatican Council (1870) explicitly declared what was always taught: the human mind can prove with absolute certainty that only one creating God exists, from the evidence of his handiwork, his effects within us and around us. This declaration of the First Vatican Council was not a new truth, but the constant teaching of the Scriptures and the living Church. Time and again the Scriptures declare that the glory and love of the Lord are manifest in his handiwork; and St. Paul insists that even the pagans and irreligious men have no excuse for ignoring God, for “whatever can be known about God is clear to them, as he himself made it so. Since the creation of the world, invisible realities, God’s eternal power and divinity, have become visible, recognized through the things he has made” (Rom 1:19-20). St. Thomas did not need the First Vatican Council to tell him that the human mind can arrive at a firm conviction of the existence ( an sit ) of a First Cause from his effects ( Sum. theol. I, q.2, a. 1-2). As to what God is or who he is, we can know very little indeed, because his nature has got to be radically different from anything we experience humanly. Even the most sublime terms in the human vocabulary when applied to God pale utterly: terms such as “love,” “forgiving,” “generous,” “all knowing,” “all powerful,” and the like. It is more honest to say with St. Thomas that we know much more what God is not than what he is ( Sum. theol. I, q.3, prol.). Imagination gives an utterly distorted picture of God, this is inevitable. The capacity of the human mind, however. is such that it can not only know that God exists, but also it great deal about what he is not, and a little bit about what we must say he is, even though human words and experience cannot do justice to the reality, as the prophet Isaiah well understood (Is 64:3; 1 Cor 2:9).
It is particularly important today that all Christians acknowledge the fundamental ability of the human mind to know with certitude that God exists. God made man in “his own image and likeness” (Gn 1:26) for this very purpose: that he might know him, love him and serve him on this earth and be happy with him forever in heaven. St. Thomas credits the human mind with far greater potential than would the sceptic and agnostic. What is more, the human mind has every right to know about the existence of God, since our whole manner of life depends upon that knowledge. To deny man the right to know God’s existence, that is, to prevent him from knowing that God exists, is a far greater crime than a simple denial of man’s capacity, for the latter is only an insult, the former adds the perversion of justice. No one today can be complacent about this contemporary insult and injustice presented in the societal game of “important things do not count.”
Despite the fact that man can know by reason that God exists, God still chose to reveal his own existence through the Scriptures. For reason is pushed to her greatest efforts when she seeks the highest truth, Truth Itself. Indeed, to Thomas it seemed remarkable that some philosophers, i.e., those gentiles without the Christian revelation, did in fact arrive at the inevitable conclusion that God exists. That is his actual starting point: a few philosophers, highly gifted, using human reason unaided by revelation did, in fact, arrive at the most important issues concerning man: the first of these being that he has a Creator. Thomas, however, was not only a fighting optimist, but also a factual realist. He knew that only a few men arrived at the really important truths in human life, and only after a long time of persistent struggling against error, and even then, arriving at a few gems of truth mixed with much dross of falsehood. These are the three reasons St. Thomas gives ( Sum. theol. I, q.1, a.1) why God in his infinite mercy felt obliged to reveal even these: so that all men, no matter how ungifted, no matter how busy, might know at least the essential truths without any error. In other words, considering the actual condition in this hectic world, God in his infinite goodness revealed even those truths that the human mind can in fact know with its native powers, so that the most important truths of human life “could be known by all men easily, with absolute certitude, and with no admixture of error” (Vat. Council 1: sess. 3, cap. 2, Denz 3005). At the same time, that Council condemned as contrary to the true Catholic faith the outright denial that “the one and true God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certitude from the things he has made, by the natural light of human reason” (Chap. 2, can. 1, Denz. 3026).
In other words, there are two kinds of truths that God has chosen to reveal to mankind: (1) those that we could never know by any amount of human reason, such as man’s destiny to eternal beatitude, the Word made flesh for our salvation, the triune nature of God, and the final resurrection of the human body; (2) those that “the human mind” can know, and in fact, that some gifted few have discovered, after a long struggle, and even then with a great admixture of error, such as the existence of one Creator of the universe, his providence over all things, and the immortality of the human soul. The first kind God alone could tells us, and he had to tell us, granting that he freely chose to predestine man to a supernatural end: if God decided to give man a home beyond his nature, then he had to tell us how to get there, namely, by following his Son to Calvary. The second kind, however, God had no need to reveal at all, but he did so that all men could come to the essential truths of human life more easily, with absolute certitude, and without any admixture of error. The most important truth in human life is that there is but one God, the Creator and Lord of all.
Thomas always maintained that many philosophers of the past have in fact come to know God’s existence through his created effects. At the same time, he was well aware how few these highly gifted “philosophers” were compared to the totality of mankind, the length of time they devoted to the search, and the great number of erroneous notions these philosophers had about “God,” as they understood him. Nevertheless, Thomas never failed to point out the many different paths philosophers found to God. (See J. A. Baisnée, “St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of the Existence of God Presented in Their Chronological Order,” Philosophical Studies in Honor of the Very Reverend Ignatius Smith, O.P., ed. J. K. Ryan, Westminster: Newman, 1952, pp. 29-64). In Thomas’ own presentation of the various paths the philosophers took, he often simplified, clarified, and strengthened the tortuous paths actually marked out by variousphilosophers. He often saw more clearly what Plato, Aristotle, Avicenna, or John Damascene wanted to say, and said it with greater precision and less admixture of error. In the Summa theologiae I, 2, 3, Thomas gives only five of the simplest and most convincing ways various philosophers actually used. These “five ways,” of course, were not the only ways in which philosophers have come to know the one, true God. Thomas himself enumerated other ways, and in one’s own personal experience one can find many other ways to God. So there is nothing exclusive, sacrosanct, or all-inclusive in the “five ways” ( quinque viae ) presented to beginners in the Summa theologiae. (See Joseph Owens, “Aquinas and the Five Ways,” The Monist, 58, 1974, 16-35).
In his Prologue to St. John, Thomas indicates “four” especially selected ways, suitable to his purpose in the commentary, that have brought philosophers to the contemplation of God’s existence, and which are most appropriate to point out to the reader of St. John’s Gospel. The contemplative is most easily brought to a knowledge of God’s creative existence by perceiving his authority, eternity, and incomprehensibility.
(i) Here St. Thomas points out that the “most efficacious way” ( via efficacissima ) for philosophers to know God is through his authority over all things.: We see things in nature that act for an end they do not and cannot know; such is true of the entire universe with all its stars and galaxies. Since such things lack intelligence, they cannot direct themselves to an end, but must be directed and moved by some Intelligence. Since the whole course of nature is most fittingly ordered to a complexity of ends, there must be something beyond nature with intelligence to direct all things as Lord and Master. In the Prologue, Thomas sees all this expressed by Isaiah in the use of the word “Lord,” when he says, “I saw the Lord.” And Thomas notes that John reflects the authority of the Incarnate Word when he says, “He came unto his own,” that is, into the world that belonged to him. This philosophical argument corresponds to the “fifth” of the famous “five ways” in the Summa theologiae. In the Summa contra gentiles (I, c. 13, n. 115), written in Paris early in 1259, this argument is attributed to St. John Damascene ( De fide orthodoxa, I, c. 3) and also associated with Averroes’ In II Phys., com. 75. Altogether, St. Thomas uses this argument from “the governance of all things in the world” eight times, and here he calls it the “most efficacious way.” (See Baisnée, loc. cit. , p. 63). Surely, this way strikes most scientists and those who contemplate the stars and the world of nature. By way of contrast, it might be noted here also, that in the Summa theologiae Thomas called the “first” way, the argument from change throughout the universe, the “more manifest”—and so it was for Aristotle.
(ii) Thomas goes on to say that some philosophers come to the knowledge of God through his eternity. Many are struck by the constant fluidity, flow, and mutability of everything in our human experience: “Time and tide wait for no man.” But some are struck by the fact that certain things are subject to more change than others. The higher a thing is in nature, the less subject to change it seems to be. Thus terrestrial bodies change in every way, and different living things have longer or shorter life-spans, while celestial bodies seem to us only to change their position in the heavens. Nevertheless, all things in the heavens and on the earth are in the constant flow of time. This “historicity” of all things in time and place would lead us to think that the cause of things in time and place must itself be beyond all time. Thus the contemplation of the temporality of every thing we experience has led some philosophers to a God who is eternal and unchanging.
This argument, it would seem, was never used elsewhere by St. Thomas. It suggests, however, Plato’s famous argument that from contemplating “that which is Becoming always and never is Existent” one is led to “that which is Existent always and has no Becoming” ( Timaeus 27D6-28C4)—an idea Thomas could have read in the translation and commentary by Calcidius (early 4th century). A similar argument from the mutability of all creatures to the absolute immutability of God is also suggested in Malachi (3:6): “I, the Lord, do not change”; while the whole universe constantly changes. The theme of the absolute contingency and temporality of creatures in contrast to the constancy and eternity of God runs throughout all the writings of St. Augustine; it is one of his fundamental themes.
In the Prologue to John, Thomas suggests that Isaiah implies this view when he uses the word “seated,” that is, without change and forever. John the Evangelist suggests the same when he says, “In the beginning was the Word.” Some contemporary commentators, however, have reduced this argument to the “first” given in the Summa Q. A. Baisnée, op. cit. , p. 63). But this view does not seem tenable, since the argument in the Prologue is cast entirely in terms of temporality and eternity, which is not at all the same as Aristotle’s argument from motion (the first way in the Summa ). For Aristotle, both God and the universe are eternal, yet God is its First Cause and Mover.
(iii) Other philosophers, Thomas continues, come to the knowledge of God from his dignity. “And these,” he says, “were the Platonists.” They saw that everything that shares “being” depends on one who has it essentially. That is to say, since everything that exists, diverse as things are, shares in the common act of existing ( esse ), there must be a first Being, whose very nature must be esse itself ipsun esse subsistens. This same argument is used by Thomas also in De potentia , q.3, a.5, and is there attributed to Avicenna ( Metaph. VIII, c,7, IX, c.4). The underlying principle, however, is fundamental lo the whole of Thomas’ metaphysics: “Whatever is possessed by participation ( per participationem ) is reduced to one that has it by essence ( per essentiam ) . ” (Cf. Peter of Berganlo, Tahula aurea , s.v. “Participare”). This is the argument Thomas uses to establish the fundamental principle of his existentialist metaphysics: in God alone are esse and quod est (essence, or nature) identical; in all creatures, even angels, they are truly distinct (cf. Sum. theol. I, q.3, a.4). In the Prologue to John, Thomas sees this unique dignity of God as expressed in the phrase of Isaiah when he says, “on a high... throne.” John implies the same when he says, “The Word was God,” which brings us back to the very name of God as “I am who am” (Ex 3:14), the source of the name Yahweh.
(iv) Finally, there were other philosophers who came to the knowledge of God from the basic incomprehensibility of truth. It is obvious to most people that the human mind is limited in its ability to know the truth. Only the most arrogant “rationalist”—usually the very ones who deny the human mind’s ability to prove God’s existence—would say, “Given time, man will know and be able to explain everything.” The reasonable philosopher, as opposed to the “rationalist,” is fully aware of the mind’s limitations in every sphere of human activity, especially the most important ones. Therefore, those realists have argued there must be some Intellect that not only knows all truth, but is Truth Itself ( ipsa veritas ) and the ultimate cause of all truth. That is to say, if truth exists in the mind, and human minds come and go in the course of human generation and death, and the foundation of our knowledge is a passing world, then there must be some ultimate ground for all truth, even the truth that “two and two are four.” In the Prologue, Thomas seems to attribute this way of reasoning to St. Augustine, who is quoted at this point (Prol. n.6). In his careful study, J. A. Baisnée found no other use of this argument by St. Thomas (See op. cit. , p. 64). Cornelio Fabro, moreover, sees this.,as a “refreshing novelty” in Aquinas, carrying expressly the signature of St. Augustine (see C. Fabro, “Sviluppo, Significato, e Valore della Quarta Via ,” Doctor Communis, 7, 1954, 82). In any case, Thomas sees this incomprehensibility of God’s ways in Isaiah’s use of the word “lofty” ( elevatum ), meaning beyond the understanding of every creature. St. John himself intimates this when he says in 1:18: “No one has ever seen God.” This reminds one very much of St. Augustine’s favorite quotation from St. Paul, “How deep are the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways!” (Rom 11:33). Almost anyone who considers even briefly the unfathomable ways of human life and experience comes to one of two conclusions: either there is a God great enough to draw good out of evil or life is “absurd.” But even the “absurdity” of life should be enough to lead men to the Lord of the absurd!
These are only four of the many ways Thomas could have chosen to show how serious, contemplative philosophers have come to a knowledge of God’s existence and his ways. In the Prologue, St. Thomas uses these four paths by which contemplative philosophers have come in order to expand on only one point: the sublimity of St. John’s contemplation ( alta ) . This, for Thomas, was the first aspect of John’s contemplation of the Word that he wished to convey to us in the Gospel. The other aspects of this contemplation—its expansiveness and perfection—are explained and exemplified in the subsequent paragraphs of this Prologue by Thomas.
III
THE CONCEPTS OF “NATURE” AND “PERSON”
The eternal salvation to which God has freely ordained mankind is a blessed, consummate happiness that cannot be attained by the powers of sheer created nature itself—much less by fallen human nature—even though in creating human nature “in his image and likeness” God intended, that this nature should partake of the intimate life of his own dynamic being, Life Itself. That such a sublime happiness is in store for those who freely choose to serve the one true God, and him alone, has been revealed to mankind by God himself; man could not otherwise conceive even the possibility of such eternal bliss beyond the grave. “No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him 15 (Is 64:3, cf. Sum. theol. I, q. 1, a. 1). In order to know that such eternal happiness exists for and can be attained by each individual human being, every person needs the special grace ( gratia ) of God, a purely unmerited “gift” (the meaning of the word gratia ) . Only by grace can man know the wonders of that goal, and the way to the goal, as well as obtain the help ( auxilium ), the actual, daily grace necessary to achieve that goal.
Man receives the message, the “Good News” ( Evangelium ), about this. salvation through faith ( fides ) in the God-Man Christ Jesus, “the one mediator between God and men, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:5-6). Each person works out his salvation with “fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), having confidence and hope ( spes ) in God’s abundant mercy and power. We achieve this salvation, however, through a total, unconditional affirming love of God and neighbor ( caritas ) exercised daily through all the other virtues required to live a full Christian life as a “pilgrim” passing this way but once to our true home, heaven, “the holy city, the new Jerusalem” (Rv 21:2). “For we do not have here a lasting city; but we are seeking one that is to come” (Heb 13:14). Thus the whole focus of our pilgrim life is the Word-made-flesh, Christ Jesus, who not only merited redemption for us, but is also the true example of the way we must live. He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6), and only through him can we go to the Father. So, Christian life consists in accepting Jesus as our Lord and Master, and in imitating him, especially in obedience to the will of the Father.
Since God himself freely chose the ultimate goal for man, he alone is free to determine the means to that goal, the road by which we must travel to attain the destined happiness beyond our dreams. God could have chosen any number of ways, but in fact he chose only one. That one way is the person of Jesus Christ, who within himself unites our human nature with his divine nature. For this reason Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). That just happens to be the one and only means set for us before we were born, not by nature, but by the grace of God.
In order that man be saved, he must accept as absolutely certain—through the gift of “faith”—two fundamental mysteries of revelation that defy human language and human comprehension. They are the mysteries of the Incarnation.— or “the Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14) and of the Trinity: or the ultimate mystery of God as three Persons in one nature. These are the two basic mysteries, enigmas, puzzles, incomprehensibles, that every person must take on faith, with love, in order to follow the way of Christ to the Father, by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
The fundamental teaching in this matter is expressed quite simply by St. Thomas:
The way for men to arrive at eternal happiness is the mystery of the Incarnation and passion of Christ, for it says. “There is no salvation in any other; for there is no other name under heaven given to men, by which we can be saved” (Acts 4:12). And therefore belief in some way, in the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ was necessary at all times and for all people; but this belief is different according to the different times and persons. ( Sum. theol. II-II, q.2, a. 7)
But Thomas goes one step farther: