{113} PART II

DIVINE REALITY


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CHAPTER 3

THE UNFOLDING OF THE PROBLEM

I. THE REALITY OF GOD

The problem of God is not a theoretical problem. We have studied this closely, but a review at this point is nonetheless appropriate. Man is a personal reality whose life consists in auto-possessing himself in the realization of his own personality, in the configuration of his I as worldly actuality of his relatively absolute reality. This life is realized by virtue of the person, qua person, being actually religated to the power of the real as a fundament which makes him to be. Religation is a dimension not of nature qua nature, but nature qua “personized”. This religation, therefore, is not just one more function among thousands of others in human life, but its radical dimension in the strictest sense of the term: it is truly the root from which each one person becomes, physically and really, not just an I, but his own I. Thus, religated to the power of the real, a man in each of his most modest acts not only elaborates the figure of his I, but does so by taking a position, in one form or another, when confronting the fundamentality which makes him to be. Now, {116} this taking of a position is constitutively and essentially problematic. I live and am always aware that I live the power of the real problematically, by living in a problematic way my own relatively absolute reality. This problematic is the problem of the power of the real in my religation; it is precisely the problem of God. From this it follows that by being a position with respect to the problem of the real, life is eo ipso the very unfolding of the problem of God. Man does not have the problem of God, but rather the constitution of his I, formally is the problem of God. The problem of God is not, therefore, a theoretical problem, but a personal one.

Whence it follows that this problem has two co-essential aspects which we must study in succession. First of all, in the power of the real as constitutive of my religation, is there that which we call God? The issue is to make us see that His reality is manifested, in some way, in religation, that is, in the constitution of my I as its fundament. Therefore —and this is the second aspect— man has access to that fundament in some form. These are, I repeat, two co-essential aspects of that which we men call “God”; but they have to be examined successively. Consequently, we must first show that there is something in reality which we designate with the name “God”. And second, the mode of access of man to this God has to be detailed precisely. In this chapter we shall limit ourselves to the first aspect of the question: the reality of God.

“Reality of God” is the statement of a problem which embraces several questions. In the first place, What is the base upon which we shall inquire and reflect? In the second place, Is the reality of God intellectively justified? Third and finally, it will be necessary to classify some of the {117} characteristics of this presumed reality. Therefore, we must examine three points:

§1. The point of departure for the problem.
§2. Justification of the reality of God.
§3. Characteristics of the reality of God.


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§ 1

THE POINT OF DEPARTURE FOR THE PROBLEM

In order to study the problem of the power of the real it is necessary to establish a firm basis for discussion. The establishment of this basis is essential not only for its effect on the dialectics of the discussion, but above all because upon it depends the character of what for us is the fundament of the power of the real. And this is not obvious at all, despite the fact that the question appeared definitely solved centuries ago. But it has not been.

I. Philosophy, and above all classical Theology have traditionally started from reality, considered as that which we call “nature”. Man himself is reality because he forms part of it. In this respect there would be no difference between man and any other cosmic reality: they all are res naturalis. This is the reason why philosophers and theologians have taken the structure of the cosmos as the basis for discussion; and proposed to ground the existence of God with arguments taken from cosmic facts. Their attempt, with all its variants, reached its culminating point in the famous “five ways” of St. Thomas. However, this does not appear to me to be the best road for our endeavor, because these celebrated five ways do not seem satisfactory, either in their point of departure or in their terminus. Let us put it briefly.

1. Above all, the starting point. In each one of his “ways” St. Thomas starts from what are for him {119} incontrovertible, and therefore basic cosmic facts relevant to our problem. But are they? That is the question.

The first way, which St. Thomas calls the most evident (manifestior via), starts from “movement”, that is, from cosmic change. Naturally, just stated in this way without further elaboration, change is a moment of the cosmos. But this is not the “fact” to which St. Thomas refers. For St. Thomas motion is, as it was for Aristotle, a state of a movable being which consists in passing from potency to act. This is the “fact” upon which the prima via of St. Thomas is based. However, this is not and cannot be a fact; it is an interpretation of the reality of motion. And insofar as the naked fact of motion is controversial, the Aristotelian interpretation of it is problematic. That interpretation is indeed only one possible conception of motion among others; the pure fact of motion, actually, is not simply a “state” of the movable, nor formally a passing from potency to act. I am not saying that the argument is not valid, but that its starting point is neither firm nor manifest.

The second way begins by saying that in sensible things we encounter an order of efficient causality (invenimus enim in istis sensibilibus esse ordinem causarum efficientium). But, is this a factual truth? Because if we ignore human actions, can one provide just a single example of efficient causality in the cosmic experience? Successions, including regular ones, as many as you may wish. But, efficient causation? Efficient causation is but an interpretation of experience. When all is said and done, cosmic occasionalism is another possible interpretation, since it is by no means a metaphysical impossibility.

{120} The third way is based upon consideration of the possible and the necessary. For St. Thomas, as he tells us explicitly, the fact that there are things which are produced and destroyed is eo ipso the fact of the non-necessity of their reality. But is it? It would be so only if generation and corruption were not themselves something necessary in nature. Now, this necessity is not given to us in experience. But neither does experience give us the contingent. Experience only shows, formally, “what is”; it shows that things “are thus” and nothing else. The possible and the necessary are not a fact given in experience.

The fourth way refers to the “degrees” of being of things: there are things which have more being or “entity” than others. But this is questionable. If, once again, we ignore human reality, is it true that experience actually gives us different degrees of being? Moreover, the assertion that inferior degrees are founded on superior ones and therefore presuppose them is something quite problematic. One must address the possibility of evolution, which makes the superior flourish out of the inferior. So in view of all this, the idea of the degree of being turns out to be quite problematic. Under these conditions, one cannot speak of the degree of being as a fact which may serve as a point of departure to prove the existence of God.

Lastly, there is the fifth way: the fact that in nature there is an order of finality. But, is this a fact? Human actions have, at least partially, a finality. But the physical cosmos? There is in it a certain convergence among its processes. But the “convergence” of cosmic processes, is that a formal {121} ordering? This is not an immediate fact but a theory, perhaps true, but still a theory.

With all this I am not maintaining that the five arguments are invalid. Rather, I am saying that contrary to what is expressly affirmed in them, they do not start from facts but from something quite different, namely, from a metaphysical interpretation of sensible reality. And this is true even to the point that an essential difference in the order of facts as facts —the difference between human actions and the rest of the cosmic facts— has no role whatsoever in the conception of the cosmos which St. Thomas uses here. In the five ways we always had to make an exception for human actions. The vision of man as a mere res naturalis, i.e., not questioning the position of man in the cosmos as a simple res (even without entering into other aspects of man) is a debatable metaphysical vision. And it is so because the basis of St. Thomas’ discussion is not the facts but the metaphysics of Aristotle, which for St. Thomas is reason itself. By dint of considering it as the metaphysics of common sense, one ends by identifying it with the facts, with the given. But this identification fails, as I have just pointed out, even by omission. The metaphysics of Aristotle is neither of common sense nor a datum of experience. This represents a radical insufficiency at the point of departure of the question.

2. But this is not the only problem. Because even if we were to acknowledge these ways, the point to which they lead us is not God as God.

Above all, the first way leads to a first unmoved mover; the second, to a first efficient cause; the third, to the first necessary being; the fourth, to a being in {122} the plenitude of being; the fifth, to a supreme intelligence. But do these five “primarities” refer to one and the same being? That must be proved.

Moreover, even supposing that it could be proved, does this mean that what has been proved is that the supreme being is formally God, what we understand by God? We would still have to prove that this being is, precisely, God. Duns Scotus saw this clearly. That is why his proof of the existence of God has two parts. In the first, what is proved is the existence of a being which is first as efficient (primum effectivum), as end (primum finitivum), and as exemplar of being (we could call him primum perfectivum). But afterwards Scotus —in a second part— needs to prove that this first being is infinite and, therefore, according to him, God. But despite everything, the Scotus’ proof is insufficient in both of its two parts. I will not now go into the first. Suffice it to say that the starting point of Scotus is quite different from that of St. Thomas: while St. Thomas starts from cosmic facts, Scotus starts with finite sensible beings. But, despite this, there is a common note anchoring both ways of thinking, one which is quite important from my point of view. I shall return to this later. What now concerns me most is the second part of the proof, namely, the identification at the end of the argument of the infinite being with God, because this leaves outstanding the same question which was supposed to be resolved. It would be necessary to prove, indeed, that when we refer to God we are referring primarily to an infinite being. Nothing could be further from reality. The fact is that Scotus searches for what the Scholastics called “metaphysical essence”, or first metaphysical concept of Divine Being; Scotus believes he has found it {123} in the infinitude. But what we all understand by God, when we search for Him, is not a metaphysical essence, but something simpler: an ultimate reality, fountain of all the possibilities which man has, and from Whom he receives, through supplication, the aid and strength to be. Therefore, the infinite being of Scotus is not formally (only with that are we dealing) this God qua God. First, even with respect to a metaphysical idea of God, it is not metaphysically evident that the metaphysical essence of God should be infinitude. Second (and this is what concerns us most), because infinitude must concern God by reason of the ultimateness, and not viceversa: formally, God qua God, is what is “ultimate”. He would only be infinite because He is God, not that He would be God because He is infinite. Third and finally, because in order for this “ultimate” to be God it is necessary that He be at one and the same time and formally “possibilitating” and “impelling”. Mere infinitude is not. Once again, at the end of these argumentations we find ourselves in Scotus, as well as in St. Thomas, with a supreme being. But is this being God? That is the question which remains outstanding.

Neither by virtue of its point of departure nor of its ending point does the cosmic structure (understood in the manner of St. Thomas or Scotus) appear to be the adequate way to ground the existence of God.