Church of St. Mary at Clinton Heights

Fr. David LeFort has been asked by various folks (including his college students) to lay out the following for regular, thoughtful & prayerful reference and reflection.  He happily provides it here:

 

Belief inand three philosophical demonstrations forthe existence of God

Whenever I begin a college course in theology, so many of the students are very serious and curious in their search for knowledge of God.  This should come as no great surprise since, from my personal and professional experience, so too are many of the adults in our Church.  From the faithful in our parishes to those who have either drifted away or chosen to stay away from our communities of faith.  For the latter, I’ve heard many of their reasons: “I don’t care about God or faith or any of it” (put bluntly, a self-centered approach without, sadly, the real virtue of fortitude and the Holy Spirit’s gift of wonder and awe); “I asked God for something and I didn’t get it” (again, a ‘me-centered’, ATM approach to God); “I’ve been hurt in the Church” (this one is very delicate and oftentimes very painful, but it would be best to address the hurt rather than run away from it); and there are others.  I don’t propose a condemnation of those who find themselves outside of the Church for I honestly feel for them and hope desperately for their return to Love itself, God Himself, and so I do propose a re-awakening of the inner soul of each person, to find what is so beautifully divine within each of God’s human creatures.

And so, I share with my students one of the many explanations of why people might long to believe in God (utilizing our faith’s Sacred Scriptures), and then I present three philosophical (reasoned) demonstrations for the existence of God.  Naturally, I could seek to use theological demonstrations for God’s existence, but those would unfortunately pale in comparison since some simply do not believe to begin with.  Moreover, when faced with the Public Square of our globalized world, most often, and again most unfortunately, people can more easily share wisdom and reason under the influence of pure philosophical debate (since it is perceived as less personal and thus experienced as less threatening) rather than relying on what I, personally, would prefer: a co-mingling of faith and reason, theological and philosophical disciplines.  That having been said, I offer the following question (from within a faith perspective) and demonstrations (from outside a faith perspective), hoping that they will, in all of us, encourage a deepening of desire & longing for closeness with God:

Why do we (and so many, many other people) believe in God? 

From Sacred Scripture we have a sense as to why we long to believe in God: because God is so passionately involved in the world, involved in His creation (including each one of us)…ordering all things sweetly (according to the Book of Wisdom).  God’s providence is God’s steady involvement as the governor and director of all things of the world…He intimately knows, involves, governs and directs all things.   Gratitude for our being, gifts, etc reaches out beyond our selves to someone to whom we can thank…God is the source and summit of all that is…and our gratitude can thus be given to Him.

We can demonstrate the existence of God using three philosophical arguments:

The Argument from Desire

As human beings, we all desire, long, seek.  We desire and seek truth.  And whatever we get in this worldgoods, justice, truthit’s just not enough.  It’s not that we want more of what we have, but we see that there is more behind the experience of a good that makes it good.  So, for example, if I play for you a glorious organ prelude, you will say (hopefully) that it was ‘good’.  But if I ask you whether or not that is finally what “Goodness” is, you will undoubtedly say, “it is not”.  So, I would suggest that what makes the prelude “good” is that it somehow participates in, or demonstrates, and is an instance of, what we know “Goodness” to be.  If I were to defend another who is being bullied and I appropriately punish the bullies, you might say that you have witnessed “justice being done”.  But if I ask you whether or not that is finally what “Justice” is, you will again undoubtedly say, “it is not”.  Again, I would then suggest that what makes the experience “just” is that it somehow participates in, or demonstrates, and is an instance of, what we know “Justice” to be.  And if I were to ask you to state a “truth” of any science, and you do, again, you would not say that it is “Truth” itself, but rather it somehow participates in, or demonstrates, and is an instance of, what we know “Truth” to be.  And so, from these, we find that we cannot be fully satisfied within the boundaries of this existence with particular instances, but rather we are propelled by our desires into the realms of the universal.

There is this desire that is in us that pushes us beyond this world of knowing, into another realm that is beyond us, that we also say, in a different albeit rational way, we know.  We know what “Goodness” itself is, what “Justice” itself is, what “Truth” itself is…and from this knowledge we also know that we cannot contain them, direct them, order them for they simply and grandly “are”.  So, in some way we must already know Truth itself, Goodness itself, Justice itself.  And that is what we call God.  God is not one truth in the world, not one good thing in the world, nor a justice in the world…those are particular expressions of or participations in God Himself (in other words, God is Truth itself, Goodness itself, Justice itself).  If you are seeking God, realize that you’ve already been found by God through our living participation in Him.  From this philosophical argument from desire, then, we demonstrate that God exists.

The Argument from Contingency (of Thomas Aquinas)

Our human experiences from an early age onward demonstrate (often sadly) that everything of creation is, ultimately fleeting.  A favorite pet, a glorious exotic flower, mountains of grandeur, even loving grandparents…all of creation and created things come into being and they pass out of being.  In other words, things of time and space exist, but they don’t necessarily exist.  They don’t have to exist in order for creation to be.  And so we say that all of creation is contingent (dependent upon something outside of itself), there is nothing in creation that possesses in itself the reason for its being; every created thing thus necessarily relies on something outside of creation to be the reason for the thing’s being.  And so, there is a need for a necessary being whose nature itself is “to Be”.  Yes, if there is contingency, there must also be that which is necessary, and for that, we must go outside of contingent realities in order to see that necessary reality…and that is what we call God.  From this philosophical argument from contingency, we demonstrate that God exists.

The Argument from the Objective Intelligibility of the World (of Joseph Ratzinger)

When we go to sleep at night, we expect the sun will rise the next morning and it does; when the temperature falls below freezing, we can rightly predict that most precipitation will be of the frozen variety; when we feel terribly ill, we go to a doctor’s office expecting that help is at hand, and oftentimes it is.  And so many other examples demonstrate that the world and our existence is imbued with meaning and reason.  Every science holds this to be true: psychology holds that it can map, understand and manipulate the human psyche; scientists rightly believe that energy can be fully understood, harnessed, created and manipulated as we choose; genetic engineers demonstrate time and time again that human DNA and all kinds of individual genes can be understood, mapped, duplicated and manipulated…and all this increases daily as science progresses.

If you think about it, every one of us also holds that there is some intelligibility in the world that seems to transcend us.  When we acknowledge that we know something, we often say that we “recognize” it.  In “re-cognizing” something, we hint that we are re-thinking a thing, thinking a thing again after it has already been thought into being.  Scientists assumerightlythat being is intelligible.  But if being is intelligible throughout all time and space, from generation to generation, eon to eon, what is this “intelligibility” and where does it reside?  What is this intelligens that has thought all into being?  That intelligens, that intelligibility we experience is what we call God.  From this philosophical argument from the objective intelligibility of the world, we demonstrate that God exists.

 

From these arguments, we ought now returnin earnestto the question of whether or not we will believe in God.  Sadly, a response for each of us cannot be developed here, but happily and solemnly, a response can be developed within the deep recesses of each one of us who ponder these great mysteries.

“The Lord walks the roads of our daily life”

VATICAN CITY, January 26, 2014 – Here is the translation of the Holy Father’s address before and after the recitation of the Angelus to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square today.

* * *

Dear brothers and sisters, hello,

This Sunday’s Gospel recounts the beginnings of Jesus’ public life in the cities and villages of Galilee. His mission did not start from Jerusalem, that is, from the religious, social, and political center but from an area on the periphery, from an area despised by the most observant Jews because of the presence in that region of foreign groups. This is why the prophet Isaiah refers to it as “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Isaiah 8:23).

It is a borderland, an area with many travelers where one meets people of different races, cultures and religions. Thus, Galilee in this way becomes the symbolic place of the Gospel’s openness to all peoples. From this point of view, Galilee resembles today’s world: the joint presence of different cultures, the necessity of confrontation and encounter. We too are immersed every day in a “Galilee of the Gentiles,” and in this sort of context we can be frightened and give in to the temptation of building walls around ourselves to be safer and more protected. But Jesus teaches us that the glad tidings that he brings are not reserved for just one part of humanity; it is to be communicated to everyone. It is a joyful proclamation to those who have been waiting for it but also perhaps to those who have given up and no longer have the strength to seek and to ask.

Starting from Galilee, Jesus teaches us that no one is excluded from God’s salvation, that, on the contrary, God prefers starting on the periphery, from those who are last, to reach all. He teaches us a method, his method, that, however also expresses the content, namely, the Father’s mercy. “Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the ‘peripheries’ in need of the light of the Gospel” (“Evangelii Gaudium,” 20).

Jesus begins his mission not only from a de-centered (“decentrato”), but also from people that are, we could say, “low profile.” To choose his first disciples and future apostles, he does not turn to the schools of the scribes and doctors of the Law, but to humbler, simpler persons, who make an effort to prepare for the Kingdom of God. Jesus calls them where they work, on the shores of the sea, they are fishermen. He calls them and they immediately follow him. They leave their nets and go with him: their life will become an extraordinary and fascinating adventure.

Dear friends, the Lord calls today too! The Lord walks the roads of our daily life. Today too, in this moment, here, the Lord passes through the piazza. He calls us to go with him, to work with him for the Kingdom of God, in the Galilees of our time. Each of you should think: the Lord passes by today, the Lord looks at me, he is looking at me! What does the Lord say to me? And if one of you feels that the Lord says to him, “Follow me,” be courageous, go with the Lord. The Lord never disappoints. Listen in your heart whether the Lord is calling you to follow him. Let us allow ourselves to be reached by his gaze, his voice, and let us follow him! So “that the joy of the Gospel may reach to the ends of the earth, illuminating even the fringes of our world” (“Evangelii Gaudium,” 288).

[Following the recitation of the Angelus, the Holy Father further addressed those gathered in St. Peter’s Square:]

Today you see that I am not alone. Two of you are with me. They came up here. They are great!  And now these two great kids will release the doves, symbol of peace.

[Release of the doves.]

I wish everyone a good Sunday and a good lunch. Goodbye!

[Translation by Joseph Trabbic]

Siena College began its spring semester this week and after going through the syllabus for my theology course with my students, we hit the ground running.  Every semester begins with questions about God, questions like “does God exist” and “is God knowable”.  And when we do, I eventually present three now-classic demonstrations for God’s existence (I’ve shared these with you before).  God’s existence can be demonstrated by arguments from Desire, from Contingency, and from the Objective Intelligibility of the World.  It’s hard stuff…and it usually takes several discussions and examples for students’ minds to begin to grasp what we’re saying and how we’re thinking.  Throughout our first three hours together, I repeatedly remind them of these demonstrations with arguments that are shorter, varied, some funny, but they’re always consistent: I believe this is the best way for them to learn these difficult yet very significant points.  As the course will unfold, we will regularly make reference to these arguments because a single, consistent message demonstrates credibility, unity of heart, integrity of mind, and singularity of purpose.

• If a person or group says a thing only once, it can be easily missed by any hearers.
• If I tell one person one thing, and then contradict that when speaking with another, I lose all credibility and integrity, don’t I?
• If, as a group, members who are supposed to be aligned with an ideal are consistently arguing, then their unity of heart and singularity of purpose come into question, don’t they?  If none can agree upon the ideal, then their group is surely threatened.

And so, in today’s Gospel, as Jesus hears of John the Baptist’s imprisonment and his almost-sure and impending death, Jesus begins His public ministry as He calls all to repent…for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  And so I think it is important that we recall a simple word from our gospel to remind us of an important aspect of our faith: the word, “all”.  Jesus called all to hear His encouragement of repentance.  He didn’t say this merely to the four disciples that He had chosen in this gospel; He won’t go and whisper it to the chosen Israelite peoples living in Jerusalem; He won’t segregate His hearers and followers….  This “ALL” is really for all.  Notice where Jesus has placed Himself: in the midst of Galilee with all of its many and varied peoples.  He won’t say to one faction, “repent” and to another, “get out of my sight”; He won’t cure certain ones, leaving others to their sin and rot; He won’t gather men into His kingdom, leaving women and children to wallow in injustice.  Instead, Jesus goes throughout ALL of Galileethe good Jews and bad, to pagans and non-believers alikecalling all to follow Him, to walk in His ways, and to inherit the kingdom of heaven.  Moreover, when the sick and disabled of every single kind are brought to Him in droves, He cures them all and sets every one free.

No wonder that in our second reading, St. Paul urges the people of Corinth to be united in heart and mind, with a singular purpose and mission: they are to be disciples of Christ Jesus and bear His kingdom in the world.

This unity of heart, this singularity of purpose is also at the heart of who we are, here in this place, today at this time.  No longer can we be a people who are limited and divided into factions: “I am a conservative Christian”, “I am a pro-life Christian”, “I am an anti-gun, liberal Christian”, and so on.  No, instead, we must be Catholic Christians, united under the head of the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who calls us out of darkness (as we hear in our first reading) and brings us into His own wondrous light.  We must be His people, who walk in authentic love for all others, who forgive transgressors just as we need to be forgiven, who serve others as we wish to be served in our need.  This is our banner, is it not?  The Creed we profess propels us deeper and deeper into the love of God which is then our pattern, our call, our mission and the purpose of all of our ministry.

I reflect on these things with you again todayvery early in this Ordinary Timebecause remembering this and recalling it regularly impresses upon all of us that our single, consistent message demonstrates credibility, unity of heart, integrity of mind, and singularity of purpose…and that authentic love is our source, is our way, and is our goal, now and always.

May the God of LoveFather, Son, and Holy Spiritkeep us firm in our purpose, humble in our actions, and loving in all our relations with peoples always and everywhere.

A singular, purposeful ray of light shines through the smoke into the edicule – the structure that has been built over Jesus’ tomb in the Holy Land of Jerusalem.