Reason and God

In Existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre says that God does not exist and that consequently there is no a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.

If Sartre is right, the future of the world is bleak and uncertain, for then life has no meaning beyond what man gives it, and any meaning he gives it will perish with him.

But is he right? According to Marjorie Grene (Introduction to Existentialism), Sartre sees a contradiction in the concept causa sui and thus holds that the existence of God is impossible. This concept implies, on the one hand, that God exists from the necessity of his own nature alone, and, on the other hand, that he stands in relation to himself, that he is what he is not, that he is in the manner of consciousness, which is aware of not being its own foundation, and thus exists not from the necessity of his own nature but contingently. Neither of these contentions, however, seems warranted. As causa sui there is no inner necessity in God beyond his own determination; and causa and sui are not different agents but one and the same being. God is self-dependent in his existence, not dependent on something other than himself. In him cause and self are one. In view of this, all contingency vanishes.

Sartre’s argument, we must conclude, fails to rule out God’s existence. As far as it is concerned, therefore, God may exist. And if God may exist, then even according to Sartre a priori Good may, too, and the world need not be so bleak and meaningless as his view implies.

But this is not all we can say. We can state reasons for Christian belief, and notably for belief in God, that appear quite cogent when correctly formulated and understood, and it is the purpose of this essay to do so.

We might begin, as does J. B. Phillips in Ring of Truth, with an appeal to the fact that “no man could ever have invented such a character as Jesus,” and call attention to the implication this has for the Bible’s interpretation of him. We might also speak of the integrative value of Christian principles for human life, the new level of moral experience to which a believer in God rises, the effectiveness of theocentric prayer, and the witness of nature and of history as a whole. But we shall pass by good reasons of this kind and point rather to more intellectual grounds for belief, grounds that are often minimized but that deserve thoughtful attention.

When one reflects carefully, he becomes aware that there is eternal truth that is super-individual and objective, and not dependent on any finite mind. Something, whatever it may be, is so. To deny or to question this is to confirm, for the denial itself posits, and the questioning itself assumes, that something is so. All men may not know this truth, and no man may know much of it; but intelligent, reflective men cannot escape it. Its reality is given with our rationality. Without it all would be unintelligible.

Even when one says that something is only probable, he implies it, for nothing could be probable if there were no truth. Probability is an estimate of a view with regard to its truth. Moreover, we say that something is probable, and thereby refer to an objective situation.

And if we take all time and all reality into consideration, we must also grant that this truth is all-inclusive. There is not the smallest part of an atom it does not involve, nor the faintest sound or the slightest movement. It includes the facts of history, the import and true nature of the laws and categories of thought and of the principles of mathematics, the factuality of any possibilities there may be. Furthermore, it is one. Any part of it cannot contradict any other or be complete without including its relation to all other parts.

Nor—and this is of special significance—does it subsist by itself. We have no experience, and can form no conception, of truth that is not known. It may be independent of any finite mind, but it is hardly independent of all minds. As there can be no perception without a perceiver, or thought without a thinker, so there can be no truth without an awareness of it.

From the foregoing it would seem to follow that there must be a universal and eternal mind that apprehends all truth—in other words, a being that in some respects at least is quite like the Christian God. As Sartre is doubtless right when he contends that there is no a priori Good if there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it, so the view (in principle already advanced by St. Augustine) is doubtless right that eternal, universal truth can be there only if it is apprehended by a comparable mind. Yet there is a difference here. That a priori Good is there may not be immediately clear by itself; but that truth is there is, and this implies the apprehending mind.

Another reason to believe in God is that the existence and nature of things needs to be explained. Something cannot come from nothing. If once there had been absolutely nothing—no God, no matter, no space or time, not even any possibilities—nothing would ever have eventuated. Even the naturalist seems to grant this when to explain the existence of the world today he says that it has always been there. But this explanation will hardly do. If a man were to point to an automobile and say, “That vehicle has always been there just as it is,” would anyone believe him? And why should it be different in respect to the world? Does the principle that here applies to its parts differ from that which applies to it as a whole? Simply to say that the world has always been there at best accounts for the fact that it exists. It does not explain how it exists or why. Nor does it measure up to the rational requirement formulated by Leibniz—a requirement many recognize as a law of thought—that whatever exists or is true must have a sufficient reason why it should be as it is and not otherwise.

To contend that the world has always existed as an explanation of its existence is really an appeal to pure chance. But existence by pure chance is inconceivable. It seems to be pretty much in the same class with getting something from nothing. In neither case is there a reason, source, or cause for what exists. The thought of the world always having been only adds infinite past time to the situation, something that itself needs to be accounted for.

It seems clear that everything must have a sufficient reason, or adequate explanation, for its existence and nature; and such an explanation, it appears, can in the last analysis be found only in a self-existing reality—that is, in a reality that is the cause of, and has a reason for, its own existence and being.

We might put it this way. For its existence and nature everything must be dependent either on itself or on something else. But things cannot go on being dependent on one another without end, for, as Thomas Aquinas already showed, that would never provide an explanation that needed no further explanation. Somewhere the series of dependent things must end in a reality that is truly self-dependent, or else the original need for an explanation remains. This means a reality that is wholly self-determined and the determiner of all else that is determined. Anything short of this would not be truly self-dependent and self-existent. It would be, not wholly self-originating and self-explaining, but dependent on circumstances beyond its control.

Reason calls for a truly self-existent and all-determining reality as the explanation of the world. And in calling for this it also by implication calls for an allknowing and almighty being, for only such a being could truly determine itself and all other things. Again, it appears, we have by reason arrived at a reality possessing some of the basic attributes of the Christian God.

But someone may ask: Granted that your reasoning is sound, are there not still equally rational considerations that impugn it? What about the criticisms of Hume and Kant?

As for Hume, he may be right that in some instances at least we do not observe power being transmitted from one event to another. But that does not mean that power, or some causal factor, is not operative in those instances. We may grant that as far as sense experience goes, no necessary connection is perceived and something might even come from nothing. But reason does not allow this. According to it, every event and thing must have a sufficient reason, including events in what from the point of view of sense perception may appear to be but an invariable sequence.

If Hume, as some hold, understands St. Thomas Aquinas and others after him to object to an infinite regression of causes merely because it leads them beyond their powers of conceiving, he evidently misconstrues their thought. It is not the supposed absurdity of infinity they project to, but the failure of an infinite regression of secondary causes to explain adequately anything that they affirm.

Kant believed that the principle of causality did not apply beyond the phenomenal world, and that pure reason encountered difficulty in seeking to apply it beyond this world. As some have understood him, he found a contradiction in the causal argument that may be stated as follows: A first, or ultimate, cause of the world would be a first link in a chain of causes and effects; but as a member of a causal series it could not be a first link, since every event in a causal series depends on a prior event or state.

With respect to the first contention, we would observe that a cause for the existence of the world is a logical requirement that, like the law of non-contradiction, presents itself to our minds as universally valid. That all things must have a sufficient reason and that something cannot come from nothing or by pure chance is an immediate and clear intellectual insight. Sense perception could not be more immediate and clear, and may be less dependable.

And as for the contradiction, it is to be recognized that God as the cause of the world need not be the first in a series of causes and effects, nor need or can he be uncaused, or what Kant described as “an absolute spontaneity of causes, by which a series of phenomena, proceeding according to natural law, begins by itself” (Critique of Pure Reason, translated by F. Max Müller, 1927, p. 364). In fact, the whole realm of causes and effects is more like a meshwork or a ball of interlocking rings than a chain of links; and God is not one of the rings, but the self-existing and all-determining Source and Ground of the whole.

The mystery of God is great. His self-existence is unique. It goes beyond man’s experience and full comprehension. But it is not in conflict with reason. On the contrary, nothing less will satisfy reason.

But what about the view held by some positivists that logic is merely operational and conventional, devoid of any ontological character or implication? Or to put it otherwise, may reason validate the existence of God, but its validation be basically worthless?

Three observations should serve to answer this question.

First, this view falls by its own implications. Even if regarded as true, it would remain merely operational and conventional, for it depends on a logic which is allegedly such. And if it is merely operational and conventional, it is not true in any meaningful, ontological sense.

Secondly, it misapprehends, as Brand Blanshard points out, the nature of some logical principles (Reason and Analysis, pp. 271–281). The truth of this statement is confirmed by the fact that no one has succeeded in living up to the theory that logic is merely conventional.

Thirdly, sense experience, on which positivists rely for verification of the meaning of a statement, itself depends on logic for its intelligibility. Without this it would be confusing. It is in terms of such concepts as likeness and difference, quality and quantity, necessity and contingency, relation and freedom, subject and object, affirmation and negation, that we understand the sensible world. The process of verification also involves these. How then could there be a dependable experience of this world, or verification of anything, if logic were purely conventional?

In closing it should be observed that there are those who distinguish between the god of the philosophers and the true and living God of the Bible. In the light of the preceding, the questionable character of such a distinction seems clear. Not all the gods of the philosophers may be acceptable; but any god that is not also the God of sound reason can hardly be the true and living God.

Peter H. Monsma is chairman of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Grove City College, Pennsylvania. he holds teh A.B. from Calvin College, the A.M. from the University of Michigan, the Th.B. from Princeton Theological seminary, and teh Ph.D. from Columbia.

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