The Question of God's Existence

a) Meaning of Terms

We take the term existence in its first and obvious meaning. When we ask whether a thing exists, we ask whether it is actual, whether it is present among those realities which are not merely possible (or potential, as philosophers say) but which are here. In ontology,—the science of fundamental metaphysics, which is the very core of philosophy,—we learn that a being is a reality, and that a reality is anything that exists or can be thought of as actually existing. A reality is therefore an existible thing. And realities are classed as potential and actual realities. A potential reality is one that can exist because (a) the thought of it as existing involves no contradiction; thus, for example, a glass mountain is a potential reality while a square circle is not, since the latter is self-contradictory and self-canceling; and (b) there is already in existence a being, a power, which is able to draw the potential thing out of its state of possibility and confer actuality upon it; in short, there is a being which can cause it to exist. An actual reality, on the other hand, is one that is really here. It is here either (a) because it has been produced by its causes, and is no longer a mere possibility but an actualized being; it is a caused being; it is an effect; it is a contingent being, that is, a being contingent upon or dependent upon its causes; or (b) because it is so completely perfect and self-sufficing that it involves in itself the perfection called existence, and it therefore must exist and cannot be non-existent; it is an uncaused being; it is not an effect; it is a necessary

GOD’S EXISTENCE A TRUTH being; it is pure actuality since is has about it no potentiality which has been or is to be actualized by the action of causes. Now, when we come to discuss the existence of God, we speak not of potential or possible existence but of actual existence. Further, we speak not of caused existence but of uncaused existence; not of contingent existence but of necessary existence; not of effected existence but of pure actuality. So much for the term existence. Now what of the term God? We must give at least a general explanation of the meaning of this latter term before we can begin to discuss the question of God’s existence. For the limited human mind cannot even start to investigate the existence (potential or actual) of a reality until it has somehow conceived, at least in a general way, just what the reality in question is. There have been philosophers, and not the least in ability or the least esteemed or the least influential, who made the perfectly inane statement, “Even if you can know that God is, you cannot know what He is.” How can anyone know that a thing exists unless he knows what thing ? It is as though a person should say, “There’s something ” and then stop short. And when the excusably curious auditor of that somewhat inconclusive and airy statement asked (as infallibly he would ask), “What?” the answer would be, “I don’t know.” Surely, the explanation of such a remark would necessarily be either aberration or alcohol. It is not the statement one would expect, delivered with smug complacency as the conclusion of a profound process of reasoning, by revered men of mind. And if the philosopher hastened to explain by adding, “Oh, I mean there’s something that started all this mess,” or, “There’s something back of this obvious universe, we don’t know what,” then it is bare charity to point out to him that he does know what, or he pretends to know what, for he states that there is an Originator or a Hidden Supporting Force that accounts for the world we live in and look upon. The moment you assign to your “something” an intelligible role in the origin or management of things, you so far define your “something” and make it this special kind of thing. If you know what a thing does, you have at least a partial grasp of what that thing is. Even Matthew Arnold professed some knowledge (granted a very sketchy knowledge) of what God is when he described Him as “The enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness.” How the somber Matthew must have rolled that sounding statement from his tongue. How pleased he must have felt, and with what satisfaction he must have stroked his mutton-chop whiskers; across the lengthening decades one can almost hear him purr. There is no position so intolerable as the agnostic position, the position which declares God to be the Great Unknowable, the Being that exists, we don’t

GOD’S EXISTENCE A TRUTH know what. The atheistic position is far more human and reasonable, absurd as it proves to be under investigation. For the atheist knows what the term God means, and he denies the actuality or the existence of what it means. He denies not signification, but significance. But the agnostic makes the word meaningless, and then denies its meaning. The agnostic is a man who hears a phrase in an unfamiliar tongue, and promptly declares it mere gibberish which can have no meaning for anybody. The point we have here so labored is a most important one and it must not be overlooked or forgotten for a moment in all that follows. You cannot know that a thing exists without knowing, in some dim measure, what it is that exists. Nor can you deny existence to a thing without being able, with some degree of exactness, to describe the conceivable thing at which your denial is directed. What, then, is meant by the term God? Most people of any period in the world’s history would answer the question promptly by saying that God (whether He really exists or not) is conceived of as an actual Being who is the supreme Originator and Ruler of the world and all things in it. A few people in any age, and a great many people in some ages, would say that the term God is a sort of blanket-name for a number of super-human beings, or even invisible “forces” viewed collectively as “Nature,” which together manage the universe; such people would be polytheists, (from the Greek poly “many” and theos “God”) or believers in a plurality of gods. The first group, to whom God is one actuality, would be monotheists (from monos “single” and theos}. Yet back of all the gods of the polytheists would be the single idea of deity, of Godheadof divinity, so that, as Mr. Chesterton declares, the idea of one supreme Power and one supreme Being is behind all the gods of all the mythologies “like the sky behind the clouds.” For Godhead is necessarily conceived as first and as supreme in both Power and Being. And to say that a Being is first and supreme is to say that It is without peer, that It stands alone in its awful place, that It is a single Being, not a plurality of Beings. Even polytheism in its crudest form looks back to monotheism from which it is a lapse and a retrogression. The points we have made give us a fair description of what the term God means to the generality of men. It means a Being (whatever be true of His existence or non-existence) that is thought of as actual, one, first, supreme, the originator and the ruler of the universe. It is of such a Being that we speak when we take up the momentous question of the existence of God. It is of such a Being,—conceived by the manin-the-street as the Almighty Ruler, and by the philosopher as the Necessary Being and the Pure Actuality, —that we ask, “Does He exist? Have we need to prove His existence? If we have this need, can the need be met by valid demonstration?”

GOD’S EXISTENCE A TRUTH

b) Urgency of the Question

Anyone who entertains ethereal academic doubts about the existence of original sin will have them blown to shreds like a fog in a gale if he can be induced to take one really attentive glance at the world about him, particularly at the funny two-legged creatures known as human beings that one sees everywhere. Let him look at men, and listen to what they are saying, and follow their thoughts and fancies, and weigh the meaning of their conduct. He will find that his inevitable theory of mechanical evolution and progress with its gospel of “onward, upward, holding steady to the goal” turns to the silliest sort of detached doctrinizing when it is brought into the light of human facts; it will never explain the wide diversity and the tumultuous clashes of human aims, ambitions, hopes, employments. If the evolutionist with his tender doubts about the tragedy of Eden were to come upon a flock of chickens or a herd of horses rushing about in wild disorder, he would instantly conclude that something had disturbed them. If he were to see a lake or pond frothed by churning waves, he would understand at once that wind or some eruptive inner force must account for the commotion. Yet the evolutionist walks daily through crowds of his fellowmen whose aims, ideals, and conduct are more furiously in conflict than warring waves or milling cattle, and he does not notice that something must have disturbed them. He does not notice that they are in any state of confusion and commotion. Or if he does, he calls the commotion difference of opinion, and thinks it a good thing; whereas, of course, it is nothing of the sort. If he found three men staring at a brick and explaining it violently in totally different ways; if he found one man calling it delicious cheese, and a second man declaring it a trick of the capitalists, and the third man praising it as an attractive bunch of violets, he would know that something had gone wrong with the minds of these men. He would not say that they were progressive fellows showing the world the worth of a healthy difference of opinion; for once, even an evolutionist with doubts about the Fall would understand that the question in the case is not one of opinion at all, but of a fundamental fact which has first to be recognized before opinions about it are valuable or even sane. But the evolutionist finds every day, and every hour if he chooses, men who differ on really important things, such as the meaning of life, in a fashion quite as wild as that of the three madmen with their brick, and he does not notice anything odd in the fact. He finds men with fantastic notions about a brick, and he knows that something is wrong with their minds; he finds men with equally fantastic notions about life, and he dqes not acknowledge that something must be wrong with their souls. He finds one man to whom life is a plodding business of getting bread and cheese; he finds another to whom life is a mere war against plots, against the whips and scorns

GOD’S EXISTENCE A TRUTH of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely ; he finds a third man to whom life is as trifling as a boutonniere. And, with glazed evolutionary eye in fixed imbecility staring, he takes in the situation and calls it Difference of Opinion and Progress; or, with eyes tightly closed, he calls it Enlightenment; or, in a frenzy of delight, he flourishes a calendar and calls it the Modern Mind. At all events, the evolutionist fails to see that the situation calls for an explanation. And there is an explanation. It is an explanation made to us by word from Heaven, but, had that message never come, the explanation might have been made by any plain man with sight enough to tell a hawk from handsaw and mind enough to know that two and two make four. The explanation lies in the fact that something has upset man, has got him off balance, has twisted his viewpoint and set askew his scale of values. We call that something original sin. It has not made men mad, but it has disorientated men, and it is the one really urgent need of men to get orientated aright. And to be orientated aright men must fairly face and come to grips with the first and fundamental question of the existence of God. For on the right settlement of that question, everything else depends. And yet, to the ordinary average man of the world, and more particularly to the ordinary average philosopher and teacher and moulder of the public mind, nothing seems more remote from the needs of life, nothing seems less practically important, than the settlement of the question of the existence of God. Discussion of it is brushed aside as of no consequence when there are pressing matters at hand, like a raise in rents, or a flutter in the stock-market, or rumors of war-clouds over the Orient, or Doctor Dewey’s views on the substantive mind, or the details of a match at tennis or golf. God’s existence is regarded as a thing of academic interest merely, a subject for idle discussion in those few drab hours of life that draw no illumination from politics, business, or sport. And even such discussion is frankly regarded as a sort of time-killer, for it is tacitly assumed from the start that no conclusion can ever be drawn from it. Chesterton remarks, “We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man’s opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything matters—except everything.” Now, if the average man of the world or the average leader of thought and of talk would pause long enough in his worldly career, and in his talk, to face plain facts, he would not only be amazed, but his knees would knock together in terror, at the smashingly practical character of this question which he had regarded as detached and academic. Upon the exist-

GOD’S EXISTENCE A TRUTH ence or non-existence of God depends the whole nature of the business of life, and the business of life in surely practical. If there is a God, and I am His creature, made to serve His purposes; and if I am doing nothing of the sort, and am not even trying to know His purposes, then assuredly I am in a bad way and there is occasion for terror and quaking knees. For, quite apart from threatening punishment, I face the terrifying fact that my whole existence,—my views, my aims, my thoughts and ideals, my work and my amusement, my attitudes, my dreams, my dealings with my fellows,—comes to a sum-total of futility and failure, of disaster and defeat. I who have prated of practical things, have been running a race towards a wrong goal. I who have talked of the needs of life, have missed them all. I who have demanded plain facts, have failed to see the plainest fact. I who have gloried to lead others, have led them all astray. Surely, there is no imbecility so monstrous, no insanity so vile and inexcusable, as the bland assumption that the question of God’s existence is of no practical urgency. For fundamentally it is the only urgent question, and the only practical question, that a man needs to face. Once that question is rightly answered, the whole pattern of life and of conduct takes form and lies with meaning before the eyes, and the one path that it is essential to discover opens clear before the feet.

C) Theories On The Point

Here we shall merely list some of the doctrines that have been propounded in answer to the question, “Does God exist; and, if so, can He be known; and, if He can be known, how is this knowledge obtained?” We shall not pause to explain these doctrines in detail, nor shall we here answer those that are false and to be refuted. Explanation and refutation will both come in their places in a later part of our study. But it is necessary for us to have at the outset a knowledge of these names and a notion of what they mean. 1. Theism is a general name for any belief in God. It is not to be confused with deism, which has a special meaning, although both terms come from words that mean God, the one Greek (Theos) and the other Latin (Deus). 2. Atheism is the opposite of theism. The letter a prefixed to a Greek derivative is usually equivalent to a non prefixed to an English word. Atheism declares that God does not exist. Of course, there is no such thing as atheism in a pure form; it is never a simple denial, but is always a replacement. Your atheist finds himself compelled to substitute for God some such sterile notion as force, or energy, or nature, or even that latest pet of the faddists, “value.” F. Agnosticism,—a term derived from the Greek agnostikos “not knowing; ignorant,”—is the theory that God cannot be known, that men must be content

GOD’S EXISTENCE A TRUTH to remain in ignorance about His Being and Essence. It is not the denial of God’s existence, it is denial of His knowability. It is the theory that God is, but no man can know what He is. It is not the Christian doctrine that man cannot know God exhaustively; it is the anti-Christian doctrine that man cannot know God at all, beyond the wholly illogical recognition of His existence. We have spoken in some detail of the silliness of the agnostic position, and we shall have occasion to speak of it again. 4, Pantheism>—from the Greek pan “everything; all” and theos “God,”—identifies, in one way or another, God and the universe. The cruder sort of pantheism makes the bodily world part and parcel of the substance of God; it teaches that God has poured Himself out, like a lake into little inlets about the shore, or like a fire in leaping flames and flying sparks, and thus it makes all things outpourings or emanations of God. This type of pantheism is called emanationism. Another form of pantheism makes the world and all things in it the manifestations of God, not His physical parts. And since a manifestation is not itself a substantial thing (think, for instance, of the manifestation of happiness which is a smile, or the manifestation of anger which is a frown), this type of pantheism tends to become idealistic, that is, to declare the visible universe only a projection of ideas or fancies, to deny its solid actuality, and to fall back on one invisible divine substance as the only thing that truly exists. Such an idealistic pantheism is latent in the doctrines of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the most influential of philosophers in the modern period of history, and it was openly developed from his principles by his immediate followers, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. 5. Monotheism, as we have seen, means the doctrine that there is only one God. 6. Polytheism is the doctrine that there exists a plurality of gods or at least of world-controlling forces. 7. Deism,—from Latin Deus “God,“—is the theory which admits the existence of God, and even His knowability, but which denies His providence and His governance of creatures. Deism holds that God has made the world, but has since ceased to care for it, and has tossed it aside to fend for itself. 8. Ontologism,—from Greek on (onto-) “being” and logos “science; knowledge,“—is the doctrine that the order of science or knowledge reflects the order of reality or being, and that, in consequence, the First Actuality is the first thing known by the mind. Therefore, says ontologism, the very first act of the mind is a vague but fundamental conception of deity. p. Traditionalism is the doctrine which holds that the human mind is not able to demonstrate God’s existence, but that it gets its knowledge of God by way of faith in a primitive revelation made to the

GOD’S EXISTENCE A TRUTH first men by Almighty God Himself, and handed down through all the generations of men by oral tradition. 10. To the foregoing types of theory we may add a few others that are not specifically concerned with the existence of God or man’s knowledge of God, but which bear more or less directly upon these points. Skepticism is a theory of doubt or denial about man’s ability to know anything for certain, and thus it includes doubt or denial of his ability to know God. Rationalism is the doctrine that human reason can fully cope with all the truths that exist or are existible, and that anything involving a reach into mystery or an acknowledgment of infinity is,—since reason cannot cope with it fully,—to be rejected as something untrue, fictional. Pragmatism holds that the workableness of any thought, scheme, action, or its suitableness in its circumstances, determines its character as true or as good; thus pragmatism denies or at least ignores the eternal standard of morality and the eternal source of truth which,—considered objectively and fundamentally,—is God, the Divine Essence. Relativism (of which pragmatism is one form or variety) is the general theory that every truth depends for its being upon the aspect in which it is seen or the circumstances to which it is referred; and thus relativism involves a denial of the absolute, the non-relative, truth of the existence of God.

Summary Of The Article

In this Article we have defined the terms of the question of God’s existence. We have seen that the existence here in question is an actual, uncaused, necessary existence. We have declared what is generally meant to any mind by the term God, and, in passing, we have shown the inanity of the agnostic statement that man can know that God exists but does not know what God is. We have stressed the importance of the inquiry into God’s existence as the most pressing and practical of questions. Finally, we have listed many theories which have to deal, more or less directly, with this important question.