Bible Stories

People have been trying for thousands of years to prove that God exists. Some of the arguments used can be traced back to Greek philosophy. Over the centuries several types of argument have been put forward:

• The Ontological Argument — from the Greek word on (being) — attempts to prove the being of God by reason alone; first put forward by Anselm (1033-1109). God is defined as something greater than anything else that can be conceived. Such a being must exist, for if he did not, he would not be the greatest conceivable being.
• The argument in its various forms has fascinated philosophers down to the present day. But most philosophers today would regard it as fallacious on the grounds that it is at best a piece of abstract logic. A definition may be logically self- consistent, but does it apply to something that actually exists? Before we can say it does, we need evidence to show that there is something actually corresponding to the definition.
• The Cosmological and Teleological Arguments are different from the Ontological Argument in that they are based on reason reflecting on observation. They were put forward by Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), who in turn drew on Aristotle (384-322 Bc), and have been restated in various forms ever since.
• The Cosmological Argument — Greek word kosmos (order, world, universe) — argues for a First Cause of everything. Nothing that we see is its own cause. Everything in our experience has causes outside itself and before itself. But such causes cannot go back infinitely. For if there were not a First Cause, which is its own cause and ultimately the cause of everything else, the whole process of causation would never have started. Therefore we presume a First Cause to which we give the name of God.

The Teleological Argument — Greek word telos (goal, purpose) — is similar. But whereas the Cosmological Argument focusses on causes, the Teleological Argument draws attention to the evidence of design and purpose in the world, not least in inanimate objects which have no intelligence of their own. Just as a watch indicates a watchmaker, so evidence of design and purpose in the world points to a purposeful Creator.

Unanswered questions

The Cosmological and Teleological Arguments are attractive, but they fall short of compelling proof. As they stand, neither of them proves the God of Christian faith or of any other faith. They leave several questions unanswered:

How do we know the First Cause and the great Designer are one and the same as the three-in-one God of Christian faith?

• Both arguments presuppose an underlying unity in the world, but can we take it for granted that all causes and evidences of design or purpose must be traced back to a single origin?
• And what about the existence of evil and all the evidence of disharmony in the world? If God is the ultimate cause of everything, is he not therefore the cause of evil?
• Ever since Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859), the question has had to be faced: How far are creatures themselves responsible for their own adaptation to their environment, and thus for the apparent design in their make-up?

To answer such questions takes us beyond the terms of the original argument.

• Alongside these arguments, there is also the Moral Argument which asks: What is the source of our moral values? How do we get our sense of right and wrong? Even atheists and agnostics habitually appeal for justice and fair play. But there is no morality in matter. It is simply there. In a purely materialistic world people may do as they please, and it is those who have the power who decide what is right and wrong. But, for all that, we all regularly try to claim that right is on our side.

The Moral Argument claims that, whether people acknowledge it or not, their sense of moral values points to the existence of a personal, moral Creator, who has built into our moral make-up a sense of justice and obligation to others.

The Moral Argument, like the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments, is not a knock-down proof for the existence of God. But all three arguments draw attention to the same evident fact—our radical lack of self- sufficiency as creatures. Our existence in the world poses questions the world itself cannot answer.

Jesus never tried to prove the existence of God, but his teaching presupposes in his hearers what Calvin later called a sense of God. This sense of God is something all human beings have. It provides the point of contact for the preaching of the gospel. The apostle Paul did not try to prove the existence of God from nature. Rather, nature tells us something of what God is like, and that we are not to confuse God with anything in creation. The Christian belief in creation is something we hold by faith.

The Cosmological, Teleological and Moral Arguments fall short of proving the God of Christian faith: this is not ultimately possible by rational argument. But they highlight some of the most fundamental questions posed by our existence in the world. The Christian belief in the Creator answers to our deep- down sense of God. In a way which no other set of beliefs has ever achieved, it enables us to make sense of the world we live in and give meaning to the evidence of ‘cause, purpose and moral values that we find all around us.

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