The Philosophical Approach to God

Among philosophers, arguments for the existence of God can become technically difficult, fast. But the general insight propelling most of them is not impossible to grasp – in fact, it’s rather easy. 

Effectively, it’s this: there are certain things included in reality that – when considered just in themselves – do not adequately explain their inclusion in reality, do not account for their being real or actual. From there, if we believe reality is intelligible and that things which seem to require causes actually have them, then we must twist up (transcend) to something that is not like those things we are trying to find a cause for, otherwise we never reach the ultimate explanation of things. We just wind up with brute absurdity, a radically unintelligible world. 

One of the primary contenders for launching a “cosmological argument” for God is the class of contingent things. A contingent thing is just anything which is but need not have been, anything which reality might not have included. Most things in our experience display obvious contingency – cats, corn, galaxies, Yngwie Malmsteen, skin tags, hormone replacement therapists, etc. These things come into existence, they go out of existence, and they change in myriad ways while existing. This strongly indicates that what these things are (their essence or nature) does not guarantee that they are (their existence).

What philosophers then argue is this: Whatever is contingent is not self-sufficient, does not exist of its own accord and thus does not explain its inclusion into reality. Nor can we get an explanation of why there is any class of contingent things just by appealing to more contingent things (including an infinite regress of contingent things) since that just presumes the very thing we are trying explain – namely, that there are contingent things. Any response that presumes the explanatory target cannot possibly provide an adequate explanation of it. Plus, just think about it: Does adding more stuff – including an infinite amount of stuff – that isn’t self-sufficient in its existence to other stuff that isn’t self-sufficient in its existence make the matter any less mysterious of why this non-self-sufficient stuff is around? To ask the question is just to answer it, so far as I’m concerned. Obviously not. 

This leaves two options. We either abandon the quest for ultimate intelligibility and rest upon the unlivable assumption that reality is bedrock absurd (for arguments contending this option is wholly untenable, see my forthcoming book The Best Argument for God). Or we posit another category to pick up the necessary explanatory work – in this case, the category of necessity itself. In other words, the reason there is any non-self-sufficient contingent reality is because there must be some entirely self-sufficient necessary reality, which is to say something that reality must include, because it has a very special nature, one whose essence or nature does, somehow, guarantee or demand its existence. 

What sort of nature must this special something have? 

Here we can follow the footsteps of St. Thomas Aquinas, who argued this being would have to have an essence that just is its existence, or an essence that is simply to be. For if it had an essence that, like all contingent things, was really distinct from its existence, it too would require some extrinsic cause that imparts existence to it, and we would not have gotten back to the truly ultimate or fundamental reality we’re looking for. Once one accepts that only a being whose essence is its existence could provide the principled explanatory stopping point concerning contingent existence, the project then becomes one of trying to understand – if such an understanding is possible at all – what a being whose essence just is existence alone is like. 

Aquinas dedicates enormous ink to this project, ultimately arguing that a being of pure existence would inevitably yield the traditional divine attributes. How is this done?

It can take a minute, to be sure. But here’s an introductory sketch. 

First, because this fundamental being is just pure existence it would be simple (not composed of parts, physical or metaphysical, precisely because it is PURE existence) and self-subsistent (existing in virtue of what it is and cannot not exist). Once those aspects are understood to follow from a being whose essence just is its existence, one can draw out the other divine attributes, including its:

• Uniqueness or inability to be multiply instantiated, since one would have to introduce a differentiating factor to have really distinct instances of such a being, and this would inevitably result in violating this being’s nature as simple or self-subsistent of both. Thus, it is not even theoretically possible for there to be more than one such entity of this sort; its nature prevents it.
• Primacy in the order of existential causality, since everything else which could exist only actually exists insofar as it is caused to exist ultimately by “existence alone”.
• Omnipotence, which follows from the previous point insofar as this being can bring about all that is inherently producible.
• Omniscience, because the world contains various patterns or forms of being (being patterned as a cat or our neighbor Bob, for example), and given a principle of proportionate causality (whatever is in the effect must somehow be contained in the ultimate cause or collection of causes), these patterns or forms must somehow be contained in or explained by fundamental reality, and if they are not each contained materially, which they cannot be since God is immaterial (all material things are composed; God is simple, is the short story there), they must be contained in an intentional way – that is, in the mind of God as possibilities of being. Thus, God not only knows all possibilities of being by knowing himself as pure existence (in cliché form, Gods know all things by knowing one thing = Himself) but knows all actualities of being in virtue of causing them to be. In short, God knows everything apart from himself not because God “watches” it, but because God makes it.
• Perfect goodness, since for Aquinas goodness just is being under the aspect of perfection or desirability, whereas evil is always some lack in being that should otherwise be present when considering the perfection of some creature (think blindness, which is a privation within beings where sight is a perfection); thus, a being of pure existence would be a being of pure and perfect goodness.

… and so forth. Again, this is merely a sketch of Aquinas’s argumentation for the divine attributes following from a being of pure existence or pure actuality. He does not simply take it as a matter of faith that fundamental reality – a being whose essence just is its existence – is God as traditionally understood. He actively argues for it, just as he actively argues that there must be a fundamental necessary reality whose essence is its existence. Again, while argumentation for God can become painfully abstract at various points, the general insight is simple enough. There is stuff that doesn’t explain its own existence. The only thing that could explain its own existence and by extension explain the existence of everything else, is something whose nature is existence as such. Upon philosophical reflection, a being of that sort turns out to bear the traditional divine attributes. So, God exists.  

Photo: Public Domain

About the Author

Pat Flynn is the author of The Best Argument for God (October 2023) and How to Be Better at (Almost) Everything. He is a re-converted Catholic, philosopher (MA), writer, musician, fitness and martial arts enthusiast, and husband and father of five living in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He blogs at Chroniclesofstrength.substack.com and hosts the Philosophy for the People podcast with Dr. Jim Madden.