Summa Blogologica - Question 2: God's Existence

It may be a surprise to some but the argument for God goes back further than Christianity. In fact, when Paul discusses the "unknown God" to the Greeks at the Areopagus in Acts 17, he is talking to a people who have heard some of these ideas but haven't generally accepted them. Remember, Socrates was put to death for his radical views on a single God, and his ethical ideals which closely mirror the teachings of Christianity.

Belief in one God precurses Christianity and was developed outside God's revelation to the Hebrews. Socrates, Parmenides, Aristotle and a slew of others were discussing the idea of an all powerful God.

St. Thomas Aquinas (STA) was "lucky" enough to live at the time in which the works of Aristotle were brand spanking new in Latin. He was able to "synthisize" these works. Not without controversy, he had his fair share of opposition from within the Church for "baptizing a pagan". That lesson is for another day, but what I wanted to unfold here is his contribution to the reasons to believe in a God. And this is how he chose to start out his Summa Theologiae. If he were to write a mass of information about God, he would first need to prove God exists. It was meant to be a "summary" of the Christian beliefs and teachings, but ended up for many to be a difficult read. He addresses it to those with a basic education, but to him, that would have been one filled with a good lexicon of philosophical terms - which many today are without. I'll attempt in this series of posts titled "Summa Blogologica" to ease the pain to bring forth the teachings. So lets dive in!

Question 2 (question 1 was more of a quick recap of nature of doctrine, read it here if you want) answers for the existence of God. That is, how do we know God exists? This is called his "quinque viae" or "five ways" since there are to him, five means of knowing God exists from "proof". Keep in mind this is not the sort of "proof" that is offered in labs where material hypothesis are testable, because God is not a material thing, but instead is on the basis of logic and to many "self evident" or "obvious". Here we go:

The first is motion. Where motion exists there must be a mover and ultimately there must be a first mover, unmoved. For example all things are set in motion by another, but there, by that very rule, cannot be an infinite set of movers; there has to be a prime and first act of motion. This is God.

The second is efficient cause, where like motion, there are effects in the universe and each effect has a cause. Because we know no particular thing which caused itself, each cause in turn has its father cause and ultimately there must be a first cause which is uncaused. This is God.

Third is the concern of possibility or "contingency". Things that are contingent do not have to exist (not necessary) but are only possible. Obviously, things in the universe do exist so there must have been a thing in the universe which was necessary and non-contingent. The contingent undergo change and thus are finally existent like the master bringing the sculpture out of the marble. The sculpture was possible but needed a change to come out of the material. That change is unnecessary, it ever needed to happen. Therefore anything that is unnecessary but is, we cant deduce that a necessary thing brought it into being. This necessary being is God.

Fourth is the gradation, or the degrees of perfection in which things are observed. In things we find varying levels of good and better, more and less, etc., which are smaller levels of an utmost in their category. There are levels of beauty, levels of light, levels of love, and all intellects recognize this but ultimately there has to be a best or a perfect or an utmost.  This utmost is God.

Finally, the fifth proof of God’s existence is the observation of governance in the world. Things in the world act in specific ways as if programmed (governed) like a computer and every computer has a program which requires intelligence; an intelligent programmer. This is God.

To read more go here and have some fun: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm

These are VERY important themes moving forward into the Summa so please, if you follow along ensure you understand God as the "first mover" or "first act" or "prime mover" as those terms will be used a "whole heck of a lot" as my brother used to say.

Questions? Comments?  When I was a kid pictures would make reading better, here you go:

An unpopular opinion, perhaps

In the recent weeks and certainly the last 10 years, American have had the trial of seeing things I thought they would never see. This country is going through such radical changes within a culture war. We're also dealing with cultural changes in a religious war and this is the sort of war that takes place on our streets as well as overseas.

Most Americans share a will that believes in religious liberty and we truly want people to practice their faith in freedom. I still believe that Americans are among the most caring network of humans on the planet but in the recent years we have certainly been hurt, wounded, scarred - whatever you want to call it.

In the wake of the recent attacks on the Boston City Marathon I myself am in some sense shocked and leveled by the reaction of some people but in a way I guess I'm not surprised at all. The suspects that committed these crimes are apparently Muslim and possibly al Qaeda sympathizers set against Americans and our way of life, which means they feel in their mind they need to take action and harm others. Now you'll have to react in some way too, and there are several choices in front of all of us:

We could be apathetic and think of somebody else will solve our problems. We could protest peacefully, electing community leaders and government officials that share our views, hopefully in sincerity. Others might take action to themselves during their own fits of rage and taking violence back to the people who think they think deserve it. Or other numerous option.

But we each personally have to also react. Each one of us has the desire, the innate will to act with justice in this situation. The problem is, for each of us, that justice might look different, to be one thing for one person and something completely different for another. In a recent article showing the body of the first suspect dead in his autopsy room, which leaked, there's a string of comments which are 90% hate. Yes, consider the source, consider the audience (this is not the consensus among Americans). Some people saying that pig's blood should be spread all ever body as to damn him forever in his own religious beliefs. Others making jokes about the 72 virgins suddenly bearing resemblance to Hillary Clinton. These certainly are creative ways of dealing with the suspect.

Most of us don't have that wish; most of us have the wish that these things simply don't happen again and that we take actions that would prevent the sort of thing from happening, the loss of life the death, of her children, the career of a young security officer/police, would be secured without a senseless act of violence. And that's not too much to ask because it too is justice.

So what is justice?

Believe it or not justice has been debated for a very long time. Socrates himself was prosecuted, tried, and put to death because of his radical views on justice. Much of those akin to Jesus Christ our Lord, the views of Socrates were not pacifist but nor were they vengeful. In his day, if someone did you evil, you did them 2 to 10 times the evil in return, and that was considered justice by the overwhelming majority of citizens in Greece, not just Athens. Is well known and well documented in Greek history that what you and I would call genocide was voted on and carried out by the generals of Greece against certain city-states, completely eradicating the population, and this was considered justice.

But with Christians know different was, as Socrates did. We know that the correct reaction to this are the very words spoken by Jesus: the radical phrase, "love your neighbor and pray for those who persecute you" which includes those who kill your neighbor which you loved. There is nothing wrong with labeling terrorists according to the professed religious belief, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. What is wrong however, is too wish the same hateful condemnation on those individuals who have done arm to us. And this teaching is tough. Only so many people in history have had the guts, the willpower, and the endurance to truly live it out. You and I can do our best to react in such a fashion, too, perhaps better than we already have. In Jesus' own words, "if you only love those who love you what reward is there in that?"

My charge to each Christian  is to act in a way of Christlike justice in the wake of these terrible disasters. It does no harm to pray for the souls of those that are working against us even if they wish to harm us. How are we going to change the world and bring an everlasting goodness if all we do is react in anger or perhaps violence for some. As a veteran and a Catholic, by all means I believe in a just war. By no means do I mean to say did each of us should not be appalled, but let us be stricken with the right sort to fear and let us react with the right side of justice.