Query:

I have been arguing with my friends about the existence of God.  How can we weigh the evidence for and against a position?  How do we know how much evidence is needed to prove a position?  It’s impossible to prove all of the arguments for a position.

Reply:

A complete answer to your questions today would require a library, not a blog post!  But let me see whether I can say anything helpful, and yet brief.  I know how you have wrestled with your own doubts too.

In one sense, your question cannot be answered.  There isn’t any rule, any procedure, or any algorithm which can weigh evidence and say “Okay, you have enough now.”  The only instrument we have is our own minds.  So there is a subjective element even in assenting to what is true independently of our minds.

In another sense, though, your question can be answered.  Ultimately, the decision to assent to a truth comes down not to whether there is “enough,” but whether the grounds for assent are more compelling than the grounds for refusing assent.  Sometimes this can even mean whether our minds are better able to endure not having answers to one set of questions than not having answers to another set of questions.  The reality of God provokes questions like “Why is there evil?”, some of which we can answer and some of which we cannot.  But His nonexistence would provoke questions like “Why is there good?  Why is there anything at all?”

The grounds for assent can themselves be weighed, and the mind has a number of resources for doing so.  One, of course, is reasoning, but reasoning by itself is not enough, because except for the first principles of all reasoning, the faculty of reason cannot supply its own premises.  These come from other sources, such as conscience, experience, and authority.

Conscience, for example, gives me grounds to believe in God, because a law requires a lawmaker.  The experience of grace gives me grounds to believe, especially in the sacraments, for in Christ things become possible which I cannot do by my own power, such as breaking free of habitual sin.  Authority is reviled these days, but sound authority actually extends my reason, conscience, and experience, because minds like yours and mine don’t operate in a vacuum – we are not solitary but social beings.  I would be a fool to disbelieve in the existence of China because the reports of people who have been there as “a mere argument from authority,” and in the same way, I would be a fool to carelessly disregard the treasure of wisdom in the Scripture and Tradition of the Church.

Practical certainty -- what used to be called moral certainty -- does not mean that I have come to a point at which no further counterargument can be found or imagined, but that I have come to a point at which it is reasonable to assent.  Assent is more than just intellectual, because it involves an act of the will.  I must not only believe, but trust.  I must allow myself not only to hold a belief, but to say “Yes!” to it.  As the apostle James says, the devils believe – and tremble.  Assent means that we believe, we accept – and, in the case of assent to God, that we rejoice.

You speak of believing in a “position,” but there is a great difference between believing in an abstract proposition and believing in a person.  Granted, I must believe in certain propositions in order to believe in a person; for example I must believe that the person is real and not a figment of my imagination.  Even so, personal knowledge exceeds abstract knowledge.  Believing and assenting to God is more like falling in love with someone and marrying her than like believing in Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. 

Even in the experience of love, over time I learn more and more about the beloved.  As I do so, I come to trust what I know about her more and more – I trust her more and more – and I come to trust my trust, so that I no longer doubt her.  Finally, in marrying, I trust myself to her, because marriage is a mutual gift of self.  It isn’t for nothing that Scripture describes our relationship to God Himself as a marriage, and promises a wedding feast.  But He is not the bride but the bridegroom.

Rather than putting an end to new knowledge, trusting myself and opening my soul to the beloved opens up the possibility of even greater knowledge.  The knowledge available from outside of the relationship of trust is very limited, but the knowledge available from inside of it the relationship is deeper and more intimate.  Every husband and wife know this.  So it is, I think, with us and God.

Of course God knows us through and through already.  He doesn’t have to learn about us, but we have to learn about Him.  In this life that knowledge is by faith, which is a kind of knowledge because it carries with it its own experience and authority; it is not just abstractly thinking something about Him but having a foretaste of Him, for as the letter to the Hebrews declares, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (a passage the meaning of which is blurred in some translations).  Yet even so, this “kind of knowledge” is not the same as seeing Him.  It is more like seeing an image in a mirror.  In the next life, faith will no longer be needed, because we will behold Him face to face.  We will know as we are known.  In that hope we live, groaning with anticipation, because it is not yet fulfilled.

It staggers me that our Lord was not content to be an Unknown God, as in the inscription on the famous Athenian altar.  It stuns me that He was not content merely to send messages, but came among us.  It leaves me in awe that the Creator of the Universe did not abhor the Virgin’s womb.

Query:

I was part of the virtual meeting you had with my high school’s Philosophy Club, and I was very taken with your remarks about the difference between beauty and sublimity.  Could you say a little more about that?

Reply:

Well, I’m not an expert on aesthetics, but sure, I’ll do the best I can!  I think it was in the 1700s that people who thought about art and literature became fascinated by the fact that beauty doesn’t exhaust the range of aesthetic values.  The kind of thing which is properly called beautiful, or lovely, or pretty, stirs a certain kind of pleased admiration, as a rose does.  It gives rise to this delight because of its grace of form and color.  But the kind of thing which is properly called sublime stirs awe, as the North Face of Mt. Everest does.  We tremble, because of its vastness or mystery.

It’s possible for the same thing to be both beautiful and sublime, just as the same thing can be both big and green.  But beauty and sublimity are different qualities, as bigness and greenness are different qualities.  So an object can be beautiful without being sublime, and it can be sublime without being beautiful.  The writer Coleridge relates an anecdote about two tourists whom he overheard viewing a great waterfall.  One tourist called it “sublime,” but the other called it “pretty.”  Coleridge inwardly agreed with former tourist, but he was revolted by the judgment of the latter tourist.

In fact, these two qualities are so different that an object which is sublime may sometimes include elements of the jarring or grotesque, even though, in themselves, these are opposed to beauty.  A painting of the crucifixion in which Jesus doesn’t seem to suffer might please us in the way beautiful things do, but would probably not be viewed as sublime.  A painting in which stuns us by the vividness with which it conveys His pain and suffering might excite awe and be viewed as sublime, but would probably not be viewed as beautiful.

Needless to say, in everyday speech people throw these words around in slangy, comical, or figurative ways, and that’s okay.  When the hero of the movie finally turns the tables on the bad guy, I might clap and cry out, “beautiful!”  When someone serves us an incomparably scrumptious piece of chocolate cake, I might delightedly exclaim, “sublime!”  This is like my calling it a “miracle” when I manage to balance my checkbook.  Does this help?

Her reply:

Thank you!  Honestly, I didn’t have clear definitions until now.  I still don’t quite understand how something can be both beautiful and sublime, though.  Could you elaborate?

Also, why do we find different things beautiful?  Is there a gift of aesthetic judgment?  And does art have to be beautiful?

My further response:

As to how something could ever be both beautiful and sublime:  Beauty and sublimity are very different, yes, but they don’t absolutely exclude each other.  For example, quite a bit of religious art has both qualities.  Consider the Madonna and Child painting by Bouguereau called The Virgin and the Lilies.  It’s pleasing color and form give it beauty, but the gravity of the faces and the holiness of the Child’s blessing inspire awe, which gives it sublimity.  Or consider Michelangelo’s Pieta.  Mary, in unfathomable grief, is holding her dead Son.  One is struck with awe by the stillness of her face and by the suggestion of a vastly greater secret than mere mortality.  Yet the arrangement is perfectly balanced and beautiful.

Believers like me consider God Himself both beautiful and sublime.  St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in awe, “Question the beautiful earth; question the beautiful sea; question the beautiful air, diffused and spread abroad; question the beautiful heavens; question the arrangement of the constellations; question the sun brightening the day by its effulgence; question the moon, tempering by its splendor the darkness of the ensuing night; question the living creatures that move about in the water, those that remain on land, and those that flit through the air, their souls hidden but their bodies in view, visible things which are to be ruled and invisible spirits doing the ruling; question all these things and all will answer: 'Behold and see! We are beautiful.' Their beauty is their confession. Who made these beautiful transitory things unless it be the unchanging Beauty?”

Now all those transitory things are beautiful – but the unchanging Beauty who made them is also sublime.

As to why we don’t all find the same things beautiful:  I think there are at least three reasons (maybe lots more).  One is that we have unequal ability to recognize beauty when we see it, and someone whose appreciation of beauty is blunt, inexperienced, or still developing, may be able to recognize some kinds of beauty more easily than others.  A child will be drawn to bright colors: “How pretty!”  But a grownup, while appreciating what the child appreciates, may be more attracted to a subtle interplay of hue and shadow.  A second reason is that even among people who are equally sensitive to beauty, one person’s “antennae” may be tuned more closely to one kind of beauty, and another’s to another kind.  Amazingly, this difference adds to the delight, because each person can help the other person to see what he sees!  A third reason is that some people are attracted to things that aren’t beautiful, but call them beautiful, just because they are attracted to them.  More about that below.

As to whether we have a gift of aesthetic judgment:  Yes, I would call it a gift.  Aesthetic perception enables us to see in things qualities that no animal can see.  It elevates us to the consideration of things beyond food and drink.  We didn’t give it to ourselves; it is a gratuitous gift to the human race from our Creator.

As to whether art has to be beautiful:  Here let me borrow from something I posted to my blog in 2019.  If by art we mean any object that we value for reasons other than its usefulness, then there is no telling what people may call “art.”  Even beauty and sublimity are far from the only qualities that people look for.  I am not here thinking of attractions which can be separated from the work, such as how much its great expense will delight my friends, or how well its color scheme blends in with the rest of my decor.  Rather I am thinking of attractions which are intrinsic to the work, which it would possess even if it I had picked it up cheap at a garage sale and it looked out of place in my house.

For example, a work of art might be neither beautiful nor sublime, but intriguing.  It might be none of these things, but a faithful representation of its object.  It might call my attention to something I had not thought of before.  It might add variety and interest to a structural feature of a building.  It might catch the eye, or even fool the eye as in the form of illusion called trompe-l'œi, like this painting by del Caso.  It might suggest an episode in a story, or convey a lesson.  It might symbolize a concept.  It might excite admiration because of the labor which went into its composition.  It might evoke a mood, such as boredom, a philosophy, such as nihilism, or a psychological state, such as obsession.  It might call up a whisper of memory or longing.  It might calm or excite the beholder.  It might challenge, comfort, or irritate.  It might build up, or it might inflict damage and harm.  It might signal that the maker holds one of the currently fashionable views (or, more rarely, that he doesn’t).  It might do nothing more than express his attitude toward himself, other people, God, or the viewer -- in the manner of a joke, a prayer, a sob, a sin, or a curse.

Such qualities have always been present in art.  The difference is that in our day they have migrated to the center of the enterprise.  Mind you, though I could do without some of them, I am not at the moment passing judgment on all of them, only pointing them out.  I am not one of those who hate all modernist art, though much of it leaves me cold.  It is often interesting -- even though it is not often what I would call beautiful.  Or, for that matter, sublime.

Her reply:

Last question for now!  In our Philosophy Club meeting, a lot of questions about God came up too, just like in your comments just now.  You mentioned that God is utterly complete, with no unfulfilled potentiality.  Since God is already fulfilled, why does He desire to have a relationship with us?  Aren’t desires born out of need or lack?

My further response:

Have you noticed how strongly people want to think that God is needy?  Quite a few people think He must have created us out of loneliness.  A widely quoted poem begins, “And God stepped out on space, and he looked around and said:  I’m lonely -- I’ll make me a world.”  But God doesn’t need us.  We Human beings are lonely because of deficiency, especially in relation to God, from whom we are alienated by sin.  But God is deficient in nothing.  He did not create us because He needed us; He created us from sheer love.

Perhaps our problem is that we think of love itself as the result of deficiency:  I love, because I need someone.  If Divine love were like that, then Divinity would incapable of love.  This is why Aristotle considers it ridiculous to think that God could have friendship with man.  He thinks of God as “thought thinking itself,” revolving around itself in utter indifference to humans and their affairs.

Then again, perhaps the reluctance to believe that God doesn’t need anything arises from a desire to put God in our debt.  The asymmetry of our relation to Him perturbs us; we want Him to depend on us, as we depend on Him.  Irrationally, we are more confident if we think He needs something from us – if we think we can make Him unhappy by withholding it -- than if it is His very nature to love.  This delusion makes us think that we can bargain with Him.

In Christian tradition, which is my own tradition, Divine love isn’t like that, because it proceeds not from deficiency but from utter fullness.  St. John doesn’t just write that God loves, but that God is love.  He is One God, yes, but this One is a burning unity of three Divine Persons united in love.  Thus it pertains to His very being to love, and it pertains to Him not because of need or compulsion, but freely, as gift.  Charity is the stupendous, supernaturally infused virtue by which a human being becomes capable of loving like that, by sharing in the Divine life.

Yet according to the same faith, the most stupendous act of Divine love is that the Second Person of the Trinity, by His nature lacking nothing and incapable of pain, joined Himself to the weakness of our own human nature.  He took the burden of our suffering upon Himself, even the suffering of our alienation from Him.  Identifying completely with us, He deliberately exposed Himself to death by torture, so that if we are in turn identified with Him, then everything in us that needs to die can also die, and we can be resurrected with Him.

A God who lacks something is not much of a God.  But a God who freely joins Himself to our suffering, just because of the fullness of His love for us, is worthy of the highest worship.

Gentle readers:  Good news.  Some time ago I mentioned that on the Read Articles page of this website, some of the articles had become unavailable because the magazine in which they were originally published was migrating to a new server and changing all the previous URLs.  I promised to keep you posted.

As it turned out, the articles remained unavailable even after the migration was finished, because now they were behind a paywall.  Not only that, but a lot of links to my publications in other journals and websites were broken too.  Disappointing.

The good news is that I've got the links to all 65 of the articles on the Read Articles page functional again.  It’s like having a whole new library of Underground Thomistica.

Query:

Did God create logic?  How can God be bound by order when He is the creator of it?  Some people say God maintains His position as the creator of the universal order because He created logic.  But He must have a system by which he “thinks” -- even if it’s a different logic than ours -- so it seems that God’s logic must be prior to His thinking.  In that case, He would need to have a logic already in order to create one!  How can I make sense of this tangle?  Please let me know what you think!

Reply:

Good questions.  Let me suggest several converging ways to think about the matter.

God, suggests Thomas Aquinas, can do everything which is “absolutely” possible – everything which doesn’t involve contradiction.  To say that He created logic would be to suggest that He could have done differently and created illogic – that He could have allowed contradictions such as a man who is a donkey, or a two which is a three.  But if I make a sentence by placing the words “God can” before a string of nonsense, that doesn’t make the sentence true, would it?  Sentences like “Can God make a man who is not a man but a donkey?” or “Can God make a two which is a three?” wouldn’t even rise to the level of being meaningful questions.  They would be like asking “Can God moongoggle tweedledee?”  So we shouldn’t say that God cannot do these things, but that they cannot be done.  A lot of things are excluded from divine omnipotence not because God doesn’t have the power to do them, but because in their very nature they are not “doable” or possible.  As St. Paul says to the Corinthians, “God is not the author of confusion.”

You can think about your puzzle this way too.  The question “Did God create logic?” is a little bit like the question “Did God create good?”  An old paradox called the Euthyphro dilemma, after one of the Socratic dialogues, asks whether God loves the good because it is good, or the good is good because God loves it.  Neither alternative seems sound, because the former seems to make good higher than God, but the latter seems to make good arbitrary.  The classical solution is that both alternatives are wrong.  Both of them make out God and good to be different things, but they are the same thing.  God, the uncreated Being, who cannot be other than He is, is identical with His own goodness.  He cannot contradict that goodness which is Himself.

Now we can approach logic, along with other forms of order, in much the same way.  Does God love the order He has placed in things because it is orderly, or did He place it in things because He loves it?  The former alternative seems to make order something different than God, something to which He must conform – so that order is above Him.  But the latter seems to make it something different than God, something which could have been other than it is – so that, for example, He could have made a world in which the principle of noncontradiction is false.  But no, God is identical not only with His own goodness, but with each of His attributes, including the order in the divine Mind.  A man or woman can be good without being powerful, or powerful without being orderly, or orderly without being beautiful.  But in the final analysis, God’s goodness, power, orderliness, and beauty are identical with each other, and identical with Himself.  That doesn’t mean that He is an impersonal abstraction.  When one looks all the way into his goodness, or any of His other attributes, one doesn’t find a Something, but a Someone.

Here is a third way to untangle the matter.  Logical and geometrical relations are examples of “formal necessities” – cases in which the reason for a thing’s necessity results from its form.  St. Thomas offers the example that a triangle’s three angles are necessarily equal to two right angles.  Today we would qualify this – we would say that a triangle’s three angles are necessarily equal to two right angles in a Euclidean geometry, because we have discovered geometries, such as spherical and hyperbolic, in which this is not the case.  Now God could have created a physical space with a geometry other than Euclidean – in fact, as it surprisingly turns out, He has (the one we inhabit!).  But He couldn’t have made a triangle’s three angles not be equal to two right angles in a Euclidean geometry, because this is not absolutely possible – a Euclidean space which is not Euclidean is like a man who is not a man but a donkey.

Let me offer one more way to think about the puzzle -- and maybe this will be the most helpful.  You speculate about how God “thinks,” but we shouldn’t think of Him “thinking” the way we “think.”  Finite beings like you and me think of one thing now and another later.  When I draw an inference, for example, I begin by thinking of the premises, and then I think of the conclusion.  So I am not thinking everything at once – a lot of my thoughts aren’t “actual” but only “potential.”  The infinite mind of God isn’t like that, because he doesn’t have any unrealized potentiality.  Everything He can be, He is, and everything He can think, He is thinking -- all at once, in an eternal Now.  So He doesn’t need to think, “Gee, from this premise, what would follow?  Oh, now I see.”  In that sense, although the logical orderliness of created things reflects the order of His Mind, He isn’t “following a logic.”

If you’re interested, I also discuss questions like these in my new Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on the One God.  I hope you keep asking them!

Yet another “In this house we believe” yard sign has popped up in my neighborhood.  They come in waves.

There are several variations, but usually the residents assure us that they think “black lives matter,” “women’s rights are human rights,” “no human is illegal,” “science is real,” “love is love,” and “kindness is everything.”

What do you think?  If by way of neighborly reply, I put this sign in my front yard instead, would my house be burned down?