Let's go to Bruno in St. Louis, Missouri, listening on 88.1, and I'm
fairly certain, Bruno, we'll have to come back to get the answer to your question,
so why don't you give your question to Tim and then we'll take the break and
return for the answer. Thank you for taking my call.
I was raised Catholic and was an altar boy, did all those things, I still
go to Catholic Church from time to time with my parents, very much enjoy it;
however, I have become an atheist, and I've been studying recently St. Thomas
Aquinas, his five ways, and I wondered what you thought of his five
ways, if they were a good path maybe back to Catholicism, or get any
other advice. Thank you Bruno, excellent questions. Tim, we'll take a little break,
and when we come back you can address-- stay on the line though Bruno, don't go
anywhere. Bruno had a question before we went to the break, and Bruno's
question was about Aquinas' five ways. Bruno was raised a Catholic, is now
an atheist-- Is he still with us? Are you still there on the line Bruno? Yes I
am. Oh there he is. Okay, so here, Tim, your response to Bruno. Okay
Bruno, am I hearing you correctly that you're reading Thomas's five ways, and
you wanted me to share with you what I think of them? Yes. Well I can tell
you, I love Thomas's five ways or five proofs for the existence of God.
I think the first three are the most powerful; the third is perhaps the
simplest, from contingent and necessary being. Bruno, let me get your thoughts on
this: when we look around in the universe we see everything in existence could
either be or not be, and that is a scientific fact. You know, the Sun doesn't
have to be here, in fact the very forces in physics, you know, the essential
forces, you know, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force,
gravity; these are not necessary forces. They are finely tuned, as physicists
tell us, they could be something that they are not, they could even not
exist at all. The universe itself, we are told, has a beginning, although
some are saying it might be further than most think, 13.7 billion years, now I
understand it may be longer, I don't know, I'm not smart enough to debate that, I
just read what the scientists say. But the bottom line is, there was a time when
it was not. And so everything that is could either be or not be.
Bruno, St. Thomas, I think brilliantly, points out: there must be being that is
not contingent or dependent upon anything else for its existence in order
for there to be existence. Because if everything that exists is dependent on
something else for its existence, well that means everything that is can't
explain existence, and can't be the source of all existence. In order for
there to be existence, there must be Being that did not receive its existence
from anything or anyone else. It is simply Being. And that means
infinite being. All perfection. There's no lack, there's no--so that ultimate
Being that we're talking about can't be "here, but not there." Can't be "part here, and
part there." No, it is simply Being. All perfection. And that, as St. Thomas
Aquinas says, we call God. I find that to be one example of a compelling argument
for the existence of God, but what do you think of that, Bruno? Well I think it's
quite interesting, and I believe I could agree that there must be a necessary
being. Yes. But I don't know how St. Thomas Aquinas
makes this giant leap from "There is a necessary being" to "By the way, it happens
to be the God that I worship." How do you make that step? How do we know it's a being
that thinks or is conscious or loves us or still exists? Perhaps it's Allah,
perhaps it's a Flying Spaghetti Monster. How does he make that big jump from "Yes,
there I something that caused all this, and it just happens to be the God I
worship." Sure. Let's start with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We
can immediately eliminate a Flying Spaghetti Monster because it is either
"here or there." It has lack. So it can't be the ultimate Being, because if you have a
being--in fact, any being in the universe, you can know that these beings are not
ultimate Being because of the fact that they're contingent. There must be, as you
say, a necessary being that is not dependent at all for its being on
another. And now, how do you make the leap then, Bruno? How do you know that
this is the God that we worship? Well, here's how you do that, Bruno. First of
all, we have to acknowledge that the God that we're speaking of has no
imperfection, no lack whatsoever. It's impossible. Because if He does, if
whatever Being we're talking about has any lack of being, well then it's
contingent. It's composed of parts, or it's lacking in some sense, and so
therefore it is not the Necessary Being. It's a being. And Bruno, we've already
established that every being in the universe, every thing in the universe, by
definition, could either be or not be. The argument states, "Then there must be that
Being that is infinite in being, all perfection." So now, when we talk about
perfections, what would these perfections be? Well, one of the perfections would be
rationality. Because in order for beings like Cy and Tim and Bruno to be here
communicating--and you and I know we did not give this gift of rationality to
ourselves--the Being that we are talking about is the source of rationality; only,
His rationality is absolutely infinite, in order to be the source of all
rationality. So we're--as we move forward, Bruno, in reason, we begin to see that
this infinite Being with all perfections is also rational, would have to be. And
Bruno, we could go down the list: would have to be all-powerful, all-knowing,
right? Could not have any lack of any of these
perfections. Well that, we know to be God. Now Bruno, that doesn't mean, though,
necessarily, that that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because that is a truth
of faith that has been revealed to us by Jesus Christ. Reason, Bruno, can only take
you so far. We can reason to the existence of one God, who is all-powerful,
all-knowing, etc. But that God, that infinite God, has revealed Himself to us
as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and in order to prove that, we have to get back
to the person of Jesus Christ, which, you know, I happen to agree, Bruno, with the
Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 643 that tells us that the
life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a matter of
history. It is an historical fact. The reason why I'm a Christian, Bruno, is
because Jesus Christ really did live, really did die, and was resurrected from
the dead, and we can know that by the testimony of over 500 eyewitnesses, we
can know that through the testimony of the miracles He performed, the miracle
of establishing His Church, the miracles that have occurred in every generation
for 2,000 years; all of this and more proves the veracity of Christ's claims. And
His claims ultimately were: number one, He's God, He's the Son of God, He's the
Messiah, He fulfilled scores of prophecies to
prove that, and He ultimately died, and as He Himself predicted, He raised
himself from the dead, and the Resurrection, my friend, is the point at
which Jesus departs from all other claimed prophets or sages down through
the centuries. He proved that He in fact is God, and He established this Catholic
Church of ours, Bruno, and really it's the Church that helps us to dive into
this great mystery and understand more completely what Jesus Christ taught. You
know, and of course we could we could spend months on that, but Bruno, that's
that's kind of scratching the scratch on the surface, but does that make sense?
Well, I certainly understand and follow your argument, but no, I am not convinced.
The questions I would raise, respectfully, is that you assume that
this necessary being is all-powerful and omni-beneficent and I don't
know why it would--I'm not convinced it would have these characteristics. But
let's just assume for a moment that this necessary Being-- Well Bruno, let me jump
in, Bruno, before you get there, let me just jump in real quick, and the
reason why I would have to have all perfection: because, if you reduce this
Being that we're talking about to a being on the level of all other beings
that we understand and we can know just using our reason, then He would be a
contingent being. And that's the argument: everything in the universe that is in
existence is contingent. That's a scientific principle. Science
demonstrates that. When we see a star, we begin to calculate, "Okay, how old is that
star, where did it come from, when did it begin?" We look at the universe, we
calculate, "Okay, how long ago was this?" Now, we can disagree over it and such, but we
understand that there's a lifespan--to the galaxies, to the stars, to the
universe itself. When I look at Cy, I can say, "Hey, when were you born, dude?"
He is not Ultimate Existence, because there was a time when he was not, and the same
thing with everything in the universe. So if, Bruno, we posit a being that is, you
know, just a really smart guy, he's really powerful but he is--he suffers some lack,
some lack of knowledge, some lack of power,
then he, too, would be a being just like all other beings in the universe, and
would be contingent, dependent upon something else for his being. And so we
have to go back further, and we have to find that Being. Now let me use a
different phrase here, use some Thomistic language since you're reading
Thomas. What St. Thomas Aquinas says, especially in the Summa Contra Gentiles,
he talks about how that, when we look at all of the beings in the
universe, we know that within their natures, they do not have the perfection
of Being. It doesn't exist, for example, in my nature to exist.
I could either exist or not exist. There must be a Being that has, within its very
nature, Existence itself. Its essence is Existence. My essence is not Existence. I
could either exist or not exist. But this Being that we're talking about, the
source of all Being, its essence would have to be Existence.
It doesn't receive being from outside of itself, but its essence is Existence. And
that's what we mean by absolute, infinite, perfect Being. And that, we say, is God.
Now again, Bruno, that doesn't mean that that's the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we
come to that through Revelation. But you had one more thing? Do we--can we do
this one more? And you were on the third proof, that is necessary and contingent
being. Bruno you had one more thing you wanted to asked Tim about that,
or one more comment you wanted to make, go ahead, Bruno.
Oh thank you, and and certainly you've explained it in quite a cogent sense,
and and I can see where this necessary being might have all these perfections
that you so adequately described. So if I compare that necessary Being to the God
of the Bible, I have a hard time lining the two up. The guy the Bible seems somewhat
capricious, hateful, cruel, murderous, somewhat Greek, and so I don't see how
those two line up, if you could help me there. Bruno, that is a great question, and
I'm going to recommend a book, too, that one of our apologists, Trent Horn, just
wrote called Hard Sayings. Excellent book, I did the apologetic review on it, it is
outstanding and he deals with a lot of these, you know, hard sayings in the Old
Testament. But Bruno, let me just give you a general principle that helped me many
years ago to understand this. A lot of folks think for some reason that
the Bible has to be, if it's inspired by God,
it has to be a book that has all beauty and all perfection, there can be no sin
there can be nothing in it morally objectionable, and that's just not true.
That's a false notion of what Holy Scripture is. Scripture is the inspired
Word of God. But remember, Bruno, that Scripture--God took
an ancient people--now if we go all the way back, Bruno, to Adam and Eve, Adam and
Eve were created in perfection, no pain, you know, everything's great, they chose to
reject God, original sin comes in, sin and death, and then sin proliferates. God
respects our freedom, Bruno. That's a very important principle that you see from
Genesis to Revelation; and when we choose to walk away from God, God steps back and
a lot of bad things happen. And then God gives us grace. He woos us back. But He
doesn't coerce. He respects our freedom. So that's what happens in the early
chapters of Genesis, when Adam and Eve fall, sin proliferates,
but then God begins to reveal Himself. He reveals Himself to Abraham, for example, a
dramatic revelation there, right around 2000 BC or a little earlier than that,
2000 BC roughly, to 1800, some would say, but I'd say closer to the 2000 mark. He
begins to reveal Himself as the one true God, but again, He reveals Himself in bits
and pieces, Bruno. He takes Abraham from a very violent, tribal situation, tribal
warfare, and God doesn't--He chooses not to give Abraham, you know, the
fullness of the revelation of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount immediately. That's
not the way God chooses to work with us. He respects our freedom. He gives them
bits and pieces. In fact, Bruno, Hebrews 1: 1-2 in Sacred Scripture, in
the New Testament, the inspired author says "God spoke in various and
partial ways through the prophets." He gives them more and more truth as they
can handle it, and He gives them more and more grace, and He brings them up until
"the fullness of time came," as Galatians 4:4 says, and He sends His son
and gives us the Sermon on the Mount. He gives us the fullness of the revelation
of who He is, as well as who we are, that the Old Testament people God did not
know. So, when you have situations, for example, like the slaughtering of the
Amalekites or the Amorites and such in the Old Testament, we're talking about,
again, a tribal people where God allows things to happen that are not God's--
you know, it's not His antecedent will, He doesn't want to see tribal warfare
and such, but there are situations that arise, because of the
proliferation of sin, where God has to deal with things in what we think today are
very harsh ways. I said this the other day, Bruno, to another caller: if you
think of it the way Saint Irenaeus describes it when he was dealing with a
heretic named Marcion, he says, "Think of the Old Testament people of God like
a two- or a four-year-old, versus the New Testament people of God that
have reached the age of maturity," right? So 18 and over. You don't deal with
a two- or four-year-old the same way you deal with an 18- or a 20-year-old. And
that's the way we see the Old Testament. God permits a lot of things to happen.
He's giving them more and more light, more and more truth, He's stemming
the tide; but at the same time He's allowing freedom, so that a lot of bad
things happen--and they still happen today--but ultimately now we have the
hope in Jesus Christ that everything will finally be rectified. And I know we
don't have time, Bruno, to get into all the particulars of the Old Testament, but
there are answers, and I think Trent Horn's book would be a great first step
for you. Thank you very much, Bruno, for occasioning such an excellent discussion.
Really happy to have you with us, please call another time.