Why should we deal at all with argu­ments if God’s exis­tence is any­way a mat­ter of faith?

Con­cern­ing the argu­ments for the exis­tence of God there are always some great ques­tions: their valid­i­ty (the pow­er of the proofs), their method (the way of prov­ing) and their aim (how they help).

1 How Valid Are These Proofs?

They were often con­test­ed in dif­fer­ent ways by many philoso­phers, but our assess­ment should be in accor­dance with the deep con­vic­tion of Paul con­cern­ing the sure knowa­bil­i­ty of God:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invis­i­ble attrib­ut­es, name­ly, his eter­nal pow­er and divine nature, have been clear­ly per­ceived, ever since the cre­ation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are with­out excuse. (Romans 1:19–20)

This basic idea of recog­nis­ing the invis­i­ble God from his vis­i­ble cre­at­ed world is to be found in every cul­ture, from the ancient thinkers to our mod­ern sci­en­tists. We do not claim that God’s exis­tence can be proved math­e­mat­i­cal­ly or demon­strat­ed, but that “it can, from cre­at­ed things, be known with cer­tain­ty by the nat­ur­al light of the human rea­son” (as Catholics for­mu­lat­ed at the Vat­i­can Coun­cil). Per­haps we can say that the proofs sup­ply a high degree of evi­dence that will exclude rea­son­able doubt even if their demon­stra­tive deduc­tions are not log­i­cal­ly inevitable or inex­orable.

The proofs for God’s exis­tence nev­er com­pel any­body to accept them nec­es­sar­i­ly because they give space to the free will. Math­e­mat­i­cal or sci­en­tif­ic demon­stra­tions start from some axioms or pos­tu­lates, and work with some log­i­cal rules accept­ed with gen­er­al con­sent by all in that area of sci­ence. In case of meta­phys­i­cal rea­son­ing there are cer­tain con­di­tions for grasp­ing the con­tent and the rela­tions between the proofs. One has to be famil­iar with the terms and with some abstract way of think­ing to see larg­er con­nec­tions. There­fore the pow­er of the argu­ments depends on one’s per­son­al turn of mind, men­tal­i­ty, dis­po­si­tion or edu­ca­tion. And the most impor­tant con­di­tion is that one has to show per­son­al readi­ness and open­ness to exam­ine one’s own way of think­ing and life.

2 The Ways of Proving

From the many dif­fer­ent ways of argu­men­ta­tion we dealt only with the induc­tive (a pos­te­ri­ori) rea­son­ing, which starts from dif­fer­ent aspects of the exis­tence (the con­tin­gent world, both in its exis­tence and its fea­tures), or of our human expe­ri­ence and which leads to the first cause that is God.

We did not deal with the deduc­tive (a pri­ori) rea­son­ing that starts from the notion of God and infers His actu­al exis­tence (like Anselm, Descartes, Leib­niz). This way of rea­son­ing is con­test­ed by many although the ques­tion is not always so sim­ple, it depends on how much we accept a cer­tain pre-knowl­edge about God.

To some extent in all our rea­son­ing both ways are con­nect­ed, we antic­i­pate some notions of God’s nature when we use the induc­tive method in order to prove His exis­tence. We can not search what is com­plete­ly unknown for us. On the oth­er hand, we have to pay atten­tion not to pre­sup­pose what we want to prove.

3 What Is the Aim of the Arguments?

Why do we need at all argu­ments and what should we use them for? What is the gain of these men­tal­ly so cost­ly and exhaust­ing meth­ods? Indeed they do not sup­ply us either the whole or the top of our knowl­edge about God. It is clear that some­one does not have to be able to lead a cer­tain way of argu­men­ta­tion in order to become a believ­er. But we use some ratio­nal expla­na­tions to under­stand that our belief in God is not in con­tra­dic­tion with the sci­en­tif­ic or philo­soph­i­cal approach of the same real­i­ty. We need not become philoso­phers or sci­en­tists to be able to under­stand God’s exis­tence. But we have to assume a point of view if we are con­front­ed today with so many dif­fer­ent world-views that are wide­spread. We need not base our belief on sci­en­tif­ic or meta­physic knowl­edge, but we should not give up using our mind and intel­lec­tu­al pow­er in search for answers con­cern­ing the exis­tence and nature of our Cre­ator, to look for his foot­prints in nature and his image in man in order to get to know Him and to strength­en our rela­tion­ship with Him.

For as I passed along and observed the objects of your wor­ship, I found also an altar with this inscrip­tion, “To the unknown god.” What there­fore you wor­ship as unknown, this I pro­claim to you. The God who made the world and every­thing in it, being Lord of heav­en and earth, does not live in tem­ples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he need­ed any­thing, since he him­self gives to all mankind life and breath and every­thing. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, hav­ing deter­mined allot­ted peri­ods and the bound­aries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way towards him and find him. Yet he is actu­al­ly not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we are indeed his off­spring.” Being then God’s off­spring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or sil­ver or stone, an image formed by the art and imag­i­na­tion of man. The times of igno­rance God over­looked, but now he com­mands all peo­ple every­where to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in right­eous­ness by a man whom he has appoint­ed; and of this he has giv­en assur­ance to all by rais­ing him from the dead. (Acts 17:23–31)

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