Skeptics have always launched “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” against Christianity and its proofs for God’s existence. It is truly a remarkable thing, for those who deny God first suppress the truth about him and then grow to hate the very person they believe does not exist (Rom 1:18–20).
Modern men do not understand the traditional proofs for God’s existence because they lack the imagination to do so. They do not understand the persuasive power these proofs have because they no longer believe in the world itself, and they cannot believe in a God who made the whole world when they have seen right through the world to nothing.
In this two-part essay, I argue for two of the proofs for God’s existence: Anselm’s ontological argument and Thomas’ “Five Proofs,” which requires us to first understand there is a real world “out there” which can be known, studied, and loved.
I.
I suppose in the history of the world, many people have written books in order to make a contribution, to be remembered, or even in order to become famous. But a few people have been so privileged as to not have to write whole books but only a few stunning and amazing paragraphs. Abraham Lincoln, for example, is today remembered for the several paragraphs of his Second Inaugural Address and the Gettysburg Address. A friend of mine said, “Nobody can write like that today,” and I think he is right. These are masterpiece paragraphs more worthy than many very long books. They are the condensed result of far more sweat and certainly more blood than many, many volumes.
Another man who authored a set of remarkably memorable paragraphs was named Anselm. Anselm was a bishop in the English church who lived in the eleventh century. His four short paragraphs at the beginning of the Proslogion constitute his own proof for the existence of God. Now, if you will have the patience to sit and stare and think about these paragraphs for a while (which I will reproduce below), you can reduplicate in yourself all of the same feelings that deep thinkers have had about them for hundreds of years. It is like staring at those computer generated squiggle pictures. If you look the right way, it all comes into amazing three-dimensional focus. But you’re not sure if you have been given the “open sesame” to the cosmos, the universal answer to the sphinx’s riddle, or if Anselm is only a philosophic used car salesman peddling a worthless optical illusion. The thing is either maddening or ecstatically delightful depending on what you are looking for.And, to further set you up for it, let me give you this teaser.
Often, the character of really great thinking is that it carries within it a great surprise. It turns everything on its head and it reverses all of our previously held prejudices, and it does this quite convincingly. Anselm’s “ontological proof” is a wonderful demonstration of this. The ontological proof takes the axiom, “It is too good to be true,” and claims to demonstrate precisely that in the highest case possible, if it is too good to be true, then this is the very proof that it is. In fact it is not just perhaps true, or quite possibly true, but it is infallibly and necessarily true. The existence of God is the highest instance of this feeling, and Anselm claims that the felt sentiment that “God’s existence is too good to be true” is in fact the very proof of the fact that he does. To even be able to conceive of God’s greatness, according to Anselm, proves that he exists.
Here is his proof:[1]
And so, Lord, do Thou, who dost give understanding to faith, give to me so far as Thou knowest it to be profitable, to understand that Thou art as we believe; and that Thou art that which we believe. And indeed, we believe that Thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Or is there no such nature, since the fool hath said in his heart, there is no god? (Psalm 14:1) But at any rate, this very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak–a being than which nothing greater can be conceived–understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist.
For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that the object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but he does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he has made it.
Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, which nothing greater can be conceived. For when he hears of this he understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.
Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.
There it is in all of its brief, maddening, beauty. Does it work? There are a few difficulties attending upon it that need to be examined.
Conception is different from imagination. I can conceive of many things that I cannot imagine. Imagination is often (but not always) linked to some sense experience, and many things are intellectually available that are not pictorially seeable, or cannot be tasted, touched, heard, or smelled. The severe abstractions of almost all modern physics and of higher mathematics are examples of this. The very puzzling nature of these disciplines is owing to the complete lack of any way to sensorially depict their meaning. And our inability to depict their meaning is not a new phenomenon. Plato understood this very well in the simplest terms. He posited that the senses owed their intelligibility to the Forms, which means we can conceive of the Forms, but we cannot imagine them because we have no sensorial reference point. So much of what makes Plato entertaining and delightful to young students is his capacity to demonstrate this very reality over and over in perplexing and fascinating ways. 2 + 2 = 4 is an expression of pure arithmetic that is prior to any visible example of it, such as putting two sets of two blocks together, and counting the result as four blocks. The truth of 2 + 2 = 4 in no way depends upon the blocks, but rather the blocks in some way participate in a higher intellectual truth that is independent of any sensory demonstration.
Likewise, it may be impossible to imagine the greatness or perfection of God but still possible to conceive of its reality. Or to put it a different way, it may be possible to know that certain things are true of God, but know very little in regard to what the content of the thatness would be. In the case of God however, this leaves us with certain difficulties that we do not have in regard to 2 + 2. That God has an identity and a character may be one thing, but it is surely no trivial thing to know what the character of perfection and greatness are, for this is what God is, and to know what he is means we can understand a little better who he is.
It may be that concepts like “perfection” and “infinite greatness” do have some minimal usefulness when conceived of independently of revelation. But it is rather like what I read a few days ago about dogs and silk worms. Dogs have a sense of smell a million times greater than their human masters. And a silk worm can detect the presence of a worm of the opposite sex from as far away as seven miles only by the sense of smell. We can conceive of such a thing, but we cannot imagine. What on earth is the actual experience of smell a million times as powerful as ours? It is a whole world that is closed to us. We can deduce the reality of these things mathematically by counting numbers of necessary molecules needed to be present for detection, but the real and lived experience of the dog is a perfect mystery to us. It is essentially empty. The purely formal conception of “a being greater than which one cannot conceive” has a certain meaning, but it is extremely limited and formal and very liable to corruption. As Calvin said, the mind of man is a “factory of idols.” The God of this conception is really, as perfection goes, almost perfectly unknown and perhaps unknowable. A philosopher who set out to conceive of a being so great that a greater could not be conceived could hardly do more than assert the bare reality of such greatness. And in all likelihood he would only establish a false idol in his own intellect insofar as he supplied content to the concept. For the darkness of the human mind is so great that such an enterprise would be doomed from the outset. How could he adequately establish and prove his notion of “greatness” and “perfection”?
This is one of the greatest difficulties attending the argument. Just who is this god of which No-Greater-Can-Be-Conceived? A running history of the commentary on the argument from Plato through Anselm shows that different thinkers have thought that he (or she or it) have quite different identities. Some form of the ontological argument has been used since Plato, and some rationalist philosophers have turned to some version of it to prove that a real extra-mental perfection, or god, must exist. But he (or she or it) could be any variety of different candidates. He (or she or it) could be a pantheistic being or the god of Aristotle or of Islam or of Christianity or an unknown and unidentified god.
But this is not where Anselm begins. He did not begin with a rational deduction. Rather, he begins with a prayer, and it was a prayer to the God of the Bible, the God of the Christian confession. He prays to the God of Jesus Christ who Anselm believed was himself the clear revelation of an otherwise very dimly-known God. Anselm asks that God would himself affirm to be true what he had already confessed: “And so, Lord, do Thou, who dost give understanding to faith, give to me so far as Thou knowest it to be profitable, to understand.” And then Anselm asserts what Christian dogmatics asserts about the being of God: he is the implication of all perfection and the One of whom it is impossible to even conceive of a greater. Or to use Anselm’s exact words, “That Thou art as we believe; and that Thou art that which we believe. And indeed, we believe that Thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Anselm prays that the God revealed in the contents of what the Bible—who is greatness above which it is impossible to conceive of rising—would be proven both true and existent.
Anselm’s prayer is not just a rhetorical device. Instead, he asserts that the ontological proof was given to him in explicit answer to prayer. How does God answer Anselm’s prayer? In the form of a negative proof, a proof from the absurdity of the contrary. Anselm imagines the position of the non-believer, the “fool.” When he examines the position of the man who denies the truth of the Christian confession, the result is complete axiomatic contradiction. It is not possible to deny God’s real extra-mental existence and not bring human thought to a complete collapse.
Anselm speaks as a Christian bishop whose vocation is to heal fools of their folly. He speaks as an evangelist and a pastor. Anselm’s proof for God’s existence is usually referred to as “the ontological proof,” but I think it could more accurately be termed “the proof from preaching” or “the proof from pastoral exhortation.” He does not begin with a natural or intellectually neutral proof for God’s existence. He does not begin with a general idea of God that may be innate or generated in anybody’s consciousness. He begins with the Word from the Bible, and in this he assumes the complete truth of the Christian faith. Anselm believes the act of preaching the gospel and proclaiming the God of the Bible necessarily implies his existence. In other words, the Word of God (the Bible) necessarily implies the existence of God because the Bible as the written Word reveals and manifests both Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word and God’s greatness and perfection. It is the revelation of One so great that a greater cannot be conceived. If the Word of God illumined in the mind does not necessarily imply God’s existence, then all of human conceptual power will explode in a train wreck because of the inherent contradiction which follows. So Anselm presses the point and says, “God is absolutely, comprehensibly perfect, and it would be a contradiction for this perfection to not include real existence.” This turns everything on its head. Once even the idea of the Pearl of Great Price is found, and one in fearfulness says, “It is too good to be true,” then Anselm’s counsel is to immediately sell everything you have and have your money in hand to make the purchase, because assuredly the “real thing” exists and will be up for sale. The One so conceived in the mind is One from whom truth overflows. He is the cup of Truth itself. He overflows with such overwhelming superabundance that it is impossible that he does not exist. His being is so rich that his existence is necessitated by even being conceived of in the mind.
This is stating the issue positively. If we state it negatively, the man who doubts God’s reality is a “fool” because he now has no intellectual grounds for even his own consciousness. If God is the being of whom no greater can be conceived, that must mean that he also created everything, for if someone else created him or created anything else they would be equal to God—or perhaps even greater than him. If God does not exist, then he has also not created. If he has not created, then nothing has been created. If nothing has been created, then the hearer also has not been created and does not himself exist. His thinking is a complete contradiction at this point, and there is no other point where he can speak wholly truly, because it is to this God that this man owes his existence and consciousness and capacity to think. This contradiction is so all embracing that “nothing” is left.
There are common objections to Anselm’s argument. One of the most common is that mental conception does not imply existence. They are different categories. The earliest objector used the example of conceiving of a most perfect island. Just because I conceive of it does not imply its existence, and this of course is true. But this is silly. God is sui generis;he is unique. Only God is the implication of all perfections. A most perfect island, or most perfect anything else, is still not in any sense necessary as a result of the conceived perfections. Necessary existence (God could not, not exist) is only the case if he is the one who contains and is all perfections. All perfections would include existence as well, for that which exists is greater than that which does not exist.
The philosopher Kant also had problems with the proof. He thought that existence added nothing to the definition of a thing. He said that this wasn’t how definitions worked.[2] I wonder if Kant disliked Anselm’s proof because here, in one instance of reality, we have a case of “thinking makes it so.” The difficulty is that for Anselm, this is true in only one instance. For Kant oddly, it is in a sense true in all instances. What is knowable is essentially a construct of the human mind. In other words, in a deep and cavernous way, “thinking makes it so.” The “thing-in-itself” apart from our mental construct does not have “existence,” and if it does, it is unknowable, and if it is unknowable, then at least for us, it has no existence. It is difficult to believe that even Kant really believed his own objection, and it shows his mentalized view of the world. He leaves readers in the position of saying that there existence of something does nothing to add to its definition. Definitionally, whether or not unicorns, fairies, pumpkin coaches drawn by magical mice, and my wife, dog, and children sitting here in the same room with me, is not effected by whether or not any of those things exist—as long as I have an adequate definition of all of these things. But surely existence must add something to the definition of a word. For if something does not exist, that is part of the definition itself: a fictional thing, a nothing. But if something does exist, it can be grasped, understood, tasted, and seen. If I said, “Oh by the way, the difference between a pumpkin coach drawn by magical mice and my wife is that she exists,” this is surely at least a little bit significant. Existence adds nothing? Now that is an Idealist proposition if ever I heard one. Idealism’s understanding
Now what of other candidates for the position of god besides the God of the Bible? The polytheistic ideas of god are shortsighted, for they actually do not believe in any god at all. Contained in the very idea of God is the reality that there can only be one of him. It is impossible that there be two, three, or six, because if there is someone else who is his equal, then it is possible to conceive of one greater than that one who has an equal. There are no other candidates.
The non-Christian monotheistic ideas of God also are shortsighted. Only in the Bible is there a revelation of who God is beyond that he exists. In no other text is there a God who can identify and know himself with absolute comprehensiveness. To be sure, I have not examined every other possibility. But everywhere else that I am aware of outside of the Bible and outside of Jesus Christ, “God” is an empty formality. This would be true of philosophers from Plato and Aristotle all the way through Hegel and beyond. It would be true of eastern monisms, and it would even be true of Islam. This is stating it negatively. To state it positively, I can only repeat what the author of the epistle to the Hebrews said, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son.” He cannot be superseded. He is the last and the only adequate Word. He is known by tasting. He bids you come and see.
ugh, the idea that it might be true. But if you did, truth could be saved, and so could the world, and nature. And that would be joy. It is a lot to sacrifice for a little ease.
To be concluded
Richard Bledsoe works as a chaplain in Boulder, Colorado.
[1] Anselm, “Proslogion” II, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, trans. S. N. Deane (Hackett, 1995), 8–9.
[2] Though there are surprising similarities to something Thomas wrote, ST 1.2.1.2.